


Coming of Age

by GoldenThreads



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, Developing Friendships, During Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, Gen, Horses, Illustrations, No animals were harmed in the making of this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2020-11-07 23:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20825645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenThreads/pseuds/GoldenThreads
Summary: Ferdinand was a general. In theory. Edelgard had promised him continued command of his battalion, and a general needed a certain measure of wealth to supply his horses, his servants, his armor and rations and lodgings and, she’dpromised.But his father sat rotting in a cell, or worse, and it could be nothing more than a fable they thought him simple enough to believe. What did promises matter?When the house of Aegir collapses around him, Ferdinand struggles to forge a path forward. He quickly discovers he can't manage it alone -- and neither, perhaps, can Edelgard.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've fiddled with this one for so long that my beta refuses to read any more of it and only comments "oh...Ferdie" on every sentence, so alas, guess it's time to send it out into the wilds. Have a very miserable 18-year-old. Quote from the Ferdinand & Marianne support line.
> 
> Same universe as the Soft Seduction series, with this providing some background on the war period, but the fics stand on their own. 
> 
> cw: implied/mentioned child abuse (canon-typical), threat of animal harm (no legitimate harm occurs on OR off screen), Hubert being a manipulative asshole because really, why can't they just let the Aegirs burn? (Edelgard w/ spray bottle to discipline her feral cat)

  


* * *

  


_Each person is born with a purpose. We must fulfill that purpose, no matter our circumstances. It imbues our lives with meaning and direction. That is what I believe. _

  


* * *

  


_Dismissed as Prime Minister. Stripped of his title. House arrest. _

None of it signified. Could not signify. Ferdinand stared blankly at the brickwork where Edelgard had been standing. _Stripped of his title._ He’d followed her on this path before she bothered to tell him that crucial detail. He always followed her, chasing in her shadow, and what a neat little trick that was, luring him into betraying—what, exactly? His father? _Dismissed._ She need only have asked and he would have— _Stripped of all power, all lands._

And off she’d walked to more important things, leaving him there, frozen, eyes burning with what couldn’t possibly be tears, lungs hot with shame, for she’d never trusted him at all, had she, never said a word of her plans even though he was her—

He wasn’t anything to her at all. 

A hand closed on his elbow, forcing him forward until his feet lurched to prevent a fall. _Roses,_ he thought, head swimming, following the scent for lack of any other direction. “Lorenz?”

The other man directed him to a quiet corner of their temporary headquarters, and though Ferdinand fully expected to find an overturned box covered in a pristine white tablecloth and already prepared with travel kettle and porcelain teacups, when Lorenz released him it was only to lean against the wall with a wry sigh. 

“You’re showing your hand,” Lorenz finally said, watching him carefully. “Clear your head before your approach her again.”

Startled, Ferdinand raised his head, caught something indulgent in that brilliant gaze as if Lorenz were bemused at a younger classmate’s attempts to solve a simple arithmetic problem. 

“It’s politics, Ferdinand.” Lorenz flicked his hand, a flippant gesture more at home discussing gossip at the tea table than discussing _this._ “It isn’t personal. You planned to play the game yourself someday, did you not? It’s time to start.”

“A game?” Ferdinand’s voice echoed in his own ears, reedy and far, far away. 

An incredulous smile stretched stiffly across Lorenz’s face, and now he really was laughing on the inside, Ferdinand could tell. But he wasn’t…mad. It was Lorenz. If the man could still daintily roll his eyes at the world, surely it couldn’t all be as catastrophic as it felt, right?

“Ferdinand,” he purred instead of reaching for that amusement simmering under the surface, a kindness. “Come now. What exactly were you planning to do?”

A ten year plan. Graduate the academy. Serve a few years in the cavalry officer corps, away from his father’s eyes, to perfect his leadership and study what the common man actually needed from the nobility. Find a junior political role where he could make his name, _his own_ name, and start dismantling his father’s policies. Foster such self-sufficiency, such excellence of spirit, that no one could ever doubt he deserved the position of Prime Minister when it inevitably passed to him, and indeed, his insight would be so keenly sought that Edelgard would ask his guidance even before he inherited the title! 

And then the glorious finale: call out his father in front of the Emperor, and the people, and the Goddess, and make him swear to his greed and all associated crimes. A grand assembly in the harsh light of day that would never be forgotten, that would be forever marked in the calendars! Reenacted in debate competitions at Garreg Mach every year!

It would be difficult to hold such competitions once the monastery burned.

Lorenz sighed with his usual disdain for their sires. “The true fool is your father. Did he think there would never be consequences for his little coup? House arrest is hardly punishment at all.” 

Ferdinand squinted at him, but no matter how hard he stared, the words pouring out of Lorenz’s mouth wouldn’t turn themselves right-side up. _Politics_ was jostling for authority and shouldering another man down from the podium when he lost his round. It was incredibly distasteful, to be sure, but the only consequences were getting tripped on your own way down from the stage when the time came. Not arrest. Not _murder._

Oh Goddess, he’d blanked that bit out. Lord Vestra, dead, and Edelgard’s gaze piercing his chest as she waited for his reaction to the fact that Hubert had _murdered his father_ for the title, and this was all fine and noble and par for the game, let’s all go march together against the _Church—_

Lorenz caught him by the shoulders as his knees buckled. “Ferdinand!” Worry, now. At least he could make sense of that. “Here, take my arm, sit and rest for a moment. It is not really so terrible. If anyone is gallant enough to effect a full turnabout of his house’s fortunes, surely it is you.”

A handkerchief made its way into Ferdinand’s hands, and he stared down at the narrow border of embroidered roses, around and around. Perhaps he was meant to cry. Perhaps Edelgard—no, she would not care enough, if anyone truly wished to see him suffer it would be her lapdog, lurking in the shadows just to see him weep. He would not give anyone the satisfaction.

Ferdinand reminded himself of that again, and again, and again, until finally it became true.

  


* * *

  


Garreg Mach fell into their hands, the enemy scattered in a rout, and everyone began to think of tomorrow. Edelgard gave her former classmates leave to return home and put their affairs in order before reporting to Enbarr to assume command as her generals. 

_How nice for them,_ Ferdinand absolutely did not think, crushing the rogue whispers as quickly as they came. _To have a life left to order._

No, Ferdinand was not tumbling down that hill again today, thank you. He poured himself another cup of Farewell To The Monastery tea, toasted an invisible companion, and downed it like he could drown himself if only he managed enough cups fast enough. 

“Hey, Ferdinand! Been looking for you everywhere!” Caspar slid onto the bench across from him, bright with so much energy that Ferdinand had to squint. A moment later, Linhardt slid in next to Ferdinand as well.

Two-pronged attack, or the everyday sight of Linhardt trailing Caspar like a reluctant chaperone? Impossible to tell. Ferdinand chided himself for his suspicions and summoned up a smile. “And now you have found me. Please, let me pour you a cup.” 

The most efficient way to acquire new reserves of tea, he had discovered, was to simply drive out all other tea-drinkers in the vicinity. Accordingly, Garreg Mach now boasted far more than he could drink alone, the shelves stocked with blends meant to soothe another’s heart. Only the Bergamot had mysteriously disappeared, and if pressed Ferdinand could not say if Lorenz had absconded with it or if he himself had dumped it into the pond on one dreary midnight, locked out of yet another meeting around the war table. It was all rather fuzzy.

Caspar and Linhardt shared a Look, the kind everyone seemed to be sharing these days, flaunting their implicit faith and understanding in each other. Edelgard and her lapdog had an entire library of such Looks, but most distressingly, even Dorothea had begun to share one with Petra and Bernadetta. The bonds of friendship truly were a beautiful thing. Ferdinand himself had experienced such mysteries, like when one of the monastery strays would come share a Look that said _please give me your table scraps._ He and the tabby even had the same hair. Charming. 

“We’ll pass,” Linhardt offered smoothly. They shared another conversation that consisted mostly of raised eyebrows, scowls, and a harrowing frown. 

Ferdinand groaned and rubbed a hand over his face. “Please. My friends. Speak freely.”

“Do you want to come home with me?” Caspar blurted, much too freely. When Ferdinand didn’t, couldn’t respond, he barreled onward with rapidly building momentum. “We’re worried about you and I know everything is real, uhhh, weird right now on the family side, and my father said you’re welcome to stay for a while since we’re all on the same side anyway, plus—”

_Noblesse oblige,_ came that sickening thought that turned Ferdinand’s stomach in an instant, his heart bobbing in an ocean of nausea. _Now the privileged look upon you with pity. Now you get to grab for the charity meant for more deserving hands._

“Thank you for the consideration, Caspar, but I will be fine.” He sounded fine when he said it, upright and hale. Good, good. Ferdinand reached for his teacup only to find Linhardt had slid it out of range, rotating the sugar spoon with a solemn grace. He raised an eyebrow, and Ferdinand fled back to the safety of Caspar’s rambling offer.

Caspar nodded like he agreed, and that was heartening, wasn’t it? Caspar thought he would be fine. Excellent validation. Good job, friendship. 

“Okay. I mean, I know you’ve probably got plenty of people to stay with in Enbarr but I wanted to make sure someone had your back. Good thing you’re always careful!”

“_Caspar,_” snapped Linhardt, and Ferdinand instantly went from sheer bafflement over how something so ominous could come out of Caspar’s mouth to frozen horror that Linhardt was taking it seriously. 

“What! Your dad said it too, Linhardt. It’s not like anyone _liked_ the Prime Minister, so Ferdinand has to watch his back! What kind of friend am I if I don’t warn him?”

“A considerate one for not giving him a heart attack. Look at him, he’s barely breathing.”

“Oh shit Ferdinand—”

“I’m fine,” he croaked, head barely supported by his shaking hands. “Fine. Very fine.”

Linhardt gave a soul-shivering sigh, as if he were about to impart an immutable truth upon the world, and fixed Ferdinand with his usual bored stare. “Look, Ferdinand. You _probably_ won’t be dragged to your death by an angry mob in the streets of Enbarr, because they’ll be too terrified of Edelgard to even consider it. Does that make you feel better?”

“I feel…I feel I am going to be ill.”

“Yes, that happens when you skip meals and try to subsist on tea,” Linhardt drawled, perfunctorily giving him three firm pats on the back. 

Later, after Caspar half-carried him and his crumpled pride to the infirmary to confirm he hadn’t actually had a heart attack, after Linhardt sighed and extended an invitation of solace at House Hevring as well, after everyone made absolutely sure to reinforce that nobody would be murdering him anytime soon, except possibly Edelgard and almost definitely Hubert—in other words, confirmed he’d die of stress before ever seeing the winding streets of Enbarr again—Ferdinand dragged himself to the cathedral to die in peace. 

Only a handful of the pews were in any condition to support his weight, and it took a few tries before he found one solid enough to fully lie down upon. He stared up through the collapsed vault of the ceiling and out towards the stars above, immutable and constant. 

Logically, one could not offer refuge to the heir of a disgraced house without bringing disgrace onto one’s own head. He couldn’t simply brush off what Caspar and Linhardt tried to do for him. And yet, how could he ever—he refused to even think the words Prime Minister—hold any government position in the nation he _loved,_ if two of its foremost ministers would only ever see him as a displaced child begging for protection, their son’s pitiable friend and nothing more. 

Bravado would not save him, but at least it dimmed the world into a waking dream. Ferdinand drifted there a little while longer amid the shattered hues of the stained glass, watching them blur into each other in a peaceful silence.

Until the slow click of heels on the marble floor cleaved that peace in two.

“Ferdinand?”

He squeezed his eyes shut in childish, foolish hope that Edelgard would disappear if only he couldn’t see her, a toddler hiding behind the parlor curtains. They had not spoken privately for some weeks now, not since she crumpled up his life like a piece of paper and dropped it into her flames, and in his lower moments, he dared think she was avoiding him.

In the lowest ones, Ferdinand knew that he was the one avoiding her.

Cowardice it may have been, but he knew what to expect when he encountered her in the war room, in the dining hall, on the battlefield. The public face of a military leader, stern and viciously unsentimental even with those soft lavender ribbons still in her hair. Now, if he raised his head to face her, he wasn’t sure who would be standing there. The classmate, who winnowed away at her failed rival with every unparalleled success, or the Emperor, axe in hand to make it swift?

Or the Edelgard who spent so many late nights with them in the library, ensuring everyone was adequately prepared for their exams—_evaluating future assets,_ he corrected himself harshly. And yet she’d explained the fundamentals of Faith to Caspar four separate times to no effect, then interviewed the professors about alternative teaching styles and drawn a mess of baffling diagrams that somehow click for him. Caspar earned a B- against all odds. If that was a game, if it was _all_ a game, friendship and politics and rivalry and laughter all, then Ferdinand had overlooked the rulebook and now it was much too late.

The wood creaked next to his head, a shadow of warmth, and Ferdinand jolted upright with such haste he bashed his knee against the back of the pew. Edelgard, seated next to him, only continued to gaze up at those specters of colored light dancing across the ruined ceiling. 

“Your battalion rides back to Enbarr tomorrow,” she said when it was clear Ferdinand had nary a word left in his head. “They wish to know if you are accompanying.”

“Yes.” A military conversation, thank the Goddess. Ferdinand could manage this. “Of course. I will oversee their return to the capital. Do you need the barracks prepared for the rest of the men’s return?”

“Already seen to.”

Of course it was. One didn’t start a war and then realize three months in that there was nowhere to accommodate the soldiers. One did, apparently, beg for work assignments from their Emperor just to feel useful. Pitiful.

“Once you are settled in Enbarr,” Edelgard offered slowly. Her voice, her expression betrayed nothing whatsoever, but her hand twitched, and Ferdinand thought of the way she’d pinch the bridge of her nose in frustration at him, of how she’d likely never do so again, now that he’d failed whatever asset evaluation she’d been running. “I hope you will come speak with me. The matter of Aegir must be resolved.”

Ferdinand shot to his feet in an instant; it was that or smother her to stop the words, and he had not yet steeled himself for death. “What more is there to say? I find you have already resolved the matter. Now please excuse me, I must pack for tomorrow’s journey.”

He squeezed by her in the pew, feet moving at a fierce clip as soon as he hit the cleared walkway through the center of the cathedral. Something in his chest twisted and screamed at the effort—surely not his heart, which had sunk as lead into his stomach days ago—and he forced back his shoulders every time he caught them hunching forward. 

Edelgard didn’t call after him, and he hated her all the more for it, because by the Goddess, he still wished she would.

  


* * *

  


Hubert made him wait. One hour, then two, and then Ferdinand stopped counting because he couldn’t be bothered to care. He pulled a dull book from one of the parlor’s ornamental shelves and let his eyes skip lazily over the words. It was meant as a slight, he knew. A slap in the face, to be treated less than his due, kept waiting like the vegetable merchant. Or Hubert truly was that busy, for all he knew, which was utterly nothing. 

On his return to Enbarr, Ferdinand had found no lack of work with his troops, always another argument to quell, fresh-faced groom to train, supply run to organize. He slept, when he slept at all, in one of the unoccupied officer’s quarters, at least until more soldiers began trickling back into the capital. An officially appointed quartermaster showed up a few days later and dumped Ferdinand out, along with no less than a dozen monastery cats that the troops had smuggled home with them. 

The bankers turned him away, all Aegir accounts now frozen and controlled by the Minister of the Interior. At least they had the kindness to seem apologetic. Truthfully, Ferdinand hadn’t any signet ring on him and hadn’t expected to get very far on that front anyway. All he wanted was an address. In his childhood, his mother had kept a small townhouse in the capital, mostly used for hosting elaborate parties and month-long binges on the opera. If it was still in her name—

It was not, and the block had long since been torn down for a new merchant association. Ferdinand had a month’s room and board left in his purse, and far less in his reserves of pride, so off he went to see what new stilted jigs he could perform at Edelgard’s request. 

Unfortunately, he was quickly informed, the Emperor was far too busy to field such a mundane request as his continued existence. The Minister of the Imperial Household would carve out a moment of his dreadfully important schedule to meet with Ferdinand instead.

For how long it took, Hubert could very well be carving up something else entirely — Ferdinand’s father, perhaps. Surely that was the eventual ‘resolution’ for Aegir one way or another. He hoped Hubert at least ruined a fine pair of gloves on it.

Still, it stung that Edelgard would not even see him. _Childish to the last,_ came that now-familiar venom. _Is the Emperor avoiding me? As if I matter._ Yes, yes, thinking too highly of himself again. At least Ferdinand had proved adept at ignoring whatever his own bruised ego tossed his way. 

The door opened eventually, and Hubert swept in with his usual aura of intensity and disdain. He stood not more than two paces into the room, arms crossed, and offered no greeting. He didn’t join Ferdinand in a chair. Exhausted, Ferdinand didn’t stand for him either, sinking further down into his seat out of spite.

Some manner of…mirth, he’d call it, fluttered wearily in his chest, the sheer manic hilarity of Hubert running an Empire, standing there with his greasy hair and stiff poise, the same way he’d stood while presenting an hour lecture on the past two hundred years of Reason academia for extra credit with the Professor. Goddess, but they were _children._ No wonder Manuela drank.

“Well?” Hubert gestured for him to proceed, white glove flashing through the air. Fitting such demeaning force into a single word had to be a learned skill. Surely no one was born so insulting or quite so cruel. 

Ferdinand formed the words perfectly in his mouth, like the orations he’d practiced for hours back at school—pointless, now, however highly he’d cherished his marks—and spoke only once he was sure not to stumble. “I need to return to the Aegir estate.” He didn’t say home. He only needed further funds if they meant to let him languish.

“Asking permission to desert?” Hubert sneered.

The dart struck true, and Ferdinand blanched as his gaze dropped to the carpet. _Desert,_ the one word he’d never let himself think, even now. If not for his gloves, his nails would be biting half-moons into his palms by now. Ferdinand wasn’t sure what was worse, the question itself, for which he had no answer, or the tone of it, like what he really wanted was to run home to his mother.

Oh, Goddess. His mother would be there. That was a concern for another day. 

Ferdinand took a breath and started again. “The dukedom was dissolved. The house is entailed, which makes it a possession of the Empire. I thought to go manage the transition and prevent further chaos. If that is _acceptable_ to you, Marquis Vestra.”

Hubert only watched him with those spiteful eyes. A prosecutor waiting for his quarry to dig its own grave. 

“My mother will join her sister’s family in Merceus. She will not be…pleasant, to remove. She has only marginal political connections of her own,” he added hastily. _Don’t take her, too. Please, please—_“But she tends to. Yell. I doubt your people would enjoy the experience of locking her into a carriage, so it is my filial duty to volunteer.”

“How kind.” 

Bored, now. Maybe. Any tone beyond the borders of snide was difficult to detect in the man. Ferdinand wished he had made a closer study of Hubert in the schoolroom, tried to figure out a single tell instead of blindly provoking him at every turn. Not an amenable option at the moment.

He hurried onward. “Anything not entailed will be immediately prepared for storage or auction.”

“I’m afraid not.” Hubert grinned, razor-sharp, and it felt like a mugging in the dead of night. Hubert would bludgeon him over the head, the moon would glint dangerously off of Hubert’s dagger, and Ferdinand would, would…close his eyes against the inevitable, apparently. “All fruits of your father’s crimes are forfeit.”

“All?” he echoed faintly. “You cannot—”

Ferdinand was a general. In theory. But Edelgard had promised him continued command of his battalion, and a general needed a certain measure of wealth to supply his horses, his servants, his armor and rations and lodgings and, she’d _promised._

But his father sat rotting in a cell, or worse, and it could be nothing more than a fable they thought him simple enough to believe. What did promises matter?

“All,” Hubert continued, brimming with a dark giddiness as he circled for the kill. “The treasury. The jewelry. The wardrobe. The furniture. The tea sets. Every frippery and finery you’ve tucked away. Your mother may keep whatever she brought in her dowry. Feel free to tell her you begged for it like a dutiful son.”

Ferdinand was distinctly aware of his jaw hanging slack, his mouth ajar, and instead of shutting it he proceeded to say the worst possible words. “And the stables?”

“Your worthless assembly of braying leather? Perhaps the butcher will find some value in them. From now on the military will supply you with horses as any other soldier.”

Ferdinand stood. Tried desperately—failed miserably—to keep his voice from shaking, his knees from knocking, his hands from reaching for Hubert’s throat with all his strength, as he answered, “Then please do me the favor of selecting a suitable merchant to accompany. I shall assist him in composing inventory lists for your perusal.”

He felt the acidic burn of Hubert’s eyes boring into his skull as he passed, as he showed his back to the viper and strolled away down the hall. Ferdinand was a dead man. One more hard stone of knowledge sinking down into his heart’s well. Hubert would wait for him to slip up, to show the slightest dissent, to let his natural argumentative drive shine through for only a moment, and that would be that. Desertion. Sedition. Treason. 

So be it. Hubert could sharpen that knife all he liked, could play whatever blood-soaked game he deemed fit to name Politics. If he wanted a sacrificial lamb, Ferdinand would damn well make him work for it.

  


* * *

  


“After all we’ve done for you, all _I_ sacrificed! This! This is how you think to repay—”

His mother’s feet dug figure-eights into the velvet carpeting, around and around as her voice scaled to even more fantastic volumes. Ferdinand knew the general cadence of the rant, had heard it time and again, though it had never actually been directed his way. She had always emphasized how much she _adored_ her son—his crest meant she’d never needed to have another child, after all! 

“Your tail between your legs like a fucking _dog,_ rolling over to show that child tyrant your yellow belly—”

It had always been easy to smile through her…fits. She was pleasant enough, really, as long as you understood she was _The_ Duchess Aegir, first lady of the empire, not a mere number in the Emperor’s slovenly harem. Liked tea, the opera, and vaguely suffered her husband. What more could Ferdinand have asked for in a mother?

And yet somehow, the last year at the monastery had dulled his ability to ignore her, to let his eyes glaze over with politeness as he tried to steer the conversation back to safer waters. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to lose his home, but it wasn’t home, it didn’t fit, and the walls already belonged to someone else. Each surface bedecked in portraiture and gilded heraldry and crystal display cases and framed medals of honor, all of it buckling beneath its own weight, closing in on him, the noose of nobility tightening—fight or flight, and he froze instead, dangling as all the air dried up. 

His mother broke from her pacing to jab a finger against his chest, still sharp under its delicate silk glove. “Weren’t _you_ the one telling all and sundry you wouldn’t be your father? And here you are, thinking of yourself without a care for anyone caught in the crossfire, without a care for _me,_ just like your pompous sire. I’m sure he’s proud of you. The both of you can rot in the Emperor’s hell together.”

“Mother—” Ferdinand shook it off with the ease of a man already mortally wounded and followed as she stalked back to her room, where she began trying to affix every piece of jewelry to her person at once. _“Mother.”_

The Duchess screamed something perfectly vulgar and slammed the door in his face.

Ferdinand stared at the door for a long moment, squared his shoulders, and turned to face her maids. “Two weeks’ wages to whoever shoves her into the carriage.” He breezed on down the hallway. Let her wear whatever she wanted on her flight into exile – no doubt Hubert had someone waiting at the border to divest her of everything but a cotton shift. 

All around him, the household staff swarmed the bedrooms and parlors, the study and the library and every odd hall, all occupied by their work with the inventory. A complete sketch of each room, then a numbered map outlining every item and its place, to verify nothing disappeared during the transition. He wouldn’t be surprised if the sketches wound up in a handbill poking fun at ministerial excess. Even Ferdinand recognized an overabundance of velvet when he saw it.

“Master Ferdinand?”

The clear, quiet voice set his shoulders slumping back down, but Ferdinand plastered on a smile before he turned to face his childhood nursemaid. “Yes?”

She looked at him curiously, like she was more concerned about his wellbeing than the looming end of her employment, but they hadn’t had a script for such things since he was tall as her knee. “We’ve finished moving the armory into the dining hall. The merchant is picking over it now, if you would like to…supervise.”

“Thank you. I will be along shortly.”

To his surprise, she didn’t immediately curtsy and scuttle away. “Are you returning to Enbarr?”

That was the question, wasn’t it. Maybe it was even their business – would there be repercussions if one served the household of a known traitor? “I intend so, yes.” He owed his staff that much. The rest was a distant buzz in his head, that drifting ache that hadn’t quieted for days. Weeks, if he was honest. Ever since childhood’s funeral in that thrice-damned Holy Tomb.

The woman bit her lip like she was doing a sum at the market, then nodded in approval at the price. “I’m happy to hear it, Sir. You’re not your father, and they’ll be glad of it soon enough.”

This time she brought the interaction to an appropriate close, retreating once he gave her leave. How odd. A year ago he’d been appalled that the serving staff at Garreg Mach showed no such deference to the noble students, and now a woman curtsying to him was like watching a foreign pantomime, jarring and unfamiliar. No one would be curtsying to him for much longer at any rate. 

Perhaps in a world based on merit, there wouldn’t be curtsies and spine-contorting bows at all. Whatever would Hubert do with himself? Build new puppet strings from his blood and bone, most likely, and hand off the reins to Edelgard as always.

The thought brought Ferdinand not even a sliver of satisfaction. He tarried in the hall. Before he left for the monastery, he had spent hours in his room, memorizing the surroundings he’d known all his life, wandering through the room like a…at the time, he’d imagined it the feeling of a man dispossessed, uprooted. How much a year could change.

Ferdinand ran a hand over his face, settling his direction if nothing else, and quickly fixed his hair and straightened his jabot in one of the hallway mirrors. If that scavenger of a merchant thought to swindle him, he’d find Ferdinand von Aegir not so easily brushed aside. He could do this.

That resolve, like so many other promises to himself, crumpled the moment Ferdinand stepped into the dining hall. Once that long table with its thirty chairs had boasted feasts of such grandeur even the Goddess would be honored by an invite. Game from every corner of the continent smothered in Almyran saffron sauce, fresh shellfish from Dagda’s shores spilling from elaborate centerpieces, roast peacock and poached quail eggs and chilled plum soups, all of it explained in copious detail by the victorious chef. 

Now it bore the ribs and marrow of the House of Aegir, his own body vivisected and cracked open for display. The ancestral armor collection was the only property conceded to Ferdinand’s possession, since the pieces were all forged by his family or gifted to them by the imperial household in honor of their service, and there they sat like so many macabre dishes. He knew each piece by heart, each story worth more to him than any childhood storybook. 

The helm of Rosamund, founder of their line, a holy knight whose fables were still known by every child in the land a thousand years on. It wasn’t even her own helm, but that of her trusty steed, a pure white horse that once escaped capture and opened the gate to an enemy hold all on its own! Rosamund had treasured her partner so dearly that she’d begged the Goddess to imbue her horse’s armor instead of her own, and the Goddess was so moved by their companionship that she granted the request. As a child, Ferdinand had searched every book from Aegir to Enbarr in hopes of discovering the name of such a trustworthy friend, all to no avail.

The shield of Derick, face-down on the table like a massive brass bowl, the matching insignia tossed carelessly within. The Warrior Prime Minister left so many volumes of letters, a man of such diplomatic excellence that his name always struck Ferdinand as a misnomer despite its grandeur. He gained the world when he lost his duel with the Emperor of his age, winning not only a wife but an immutable purpose as Shield of the Empire. To fight so worthy an opponent and find victory in defeat; Derick would know what road to take, not merely stand there boiling in his skin like a frog in a pot.

Aegir had never boasted a single crest relic, and heavy armor rarely lasted through the ages. The collection only truly began with Konrad von Aegir’s atrociously golden cuirass, weighed down by its sheer wealth of filigree. There were stories of his exploits, of course, but Ferdinand privately wondered if he’d ever done more than select a spot on the hill where he could catch the sun’s rays and blind everyone in his path with the reflection. 

Ferdinand paused before his favorite piece of the lot, a set of articulated vambraces made for arms much slimmer than his own. The eccentric Lady Allaryce provided no heirs to the family’s main branch, resulting in a bitterly contested feud over the inheritance, which was all the family ever bothered to remember about her. What she had left behind was a groundbreaking methodology for articulated armor, and so many delicate yet invulnerable pieces of mail that Ferdinand learned half the craft from her work alone. The metallurgy book she penned had accompanied him to the monastery; he knew not what became of it from there. One more Aegir gift for the bonfire.

Finally, at the end of the table, he passed by the hundred pieces of Wulfrik’s ceremonial suit, the set still in use for ascension portraiture. There was a painting of his father wearing it and looking like an over-boiled sausage in the family gallery, unless someone had already secreted it away for use as an imperial dartboard. 

_Faintly ridiculous,_ Ferdinand thought, dizzy with rebellion as his eyes swept from one end of the table to the other. Shiny hunks of metal that couldn’t spare their masters, but always gave each descendant ample fodder for a terminally gorged pride. His family butchered and carved for the Emperor’s table, an appetizer course compliments of Chef Vestra, the merchant scribbling down his comments and criticism so the meal could be weighed for value, for how much coin Ferdinand would be given to stave off the inevitable.

Shrill shrieking in the hallway drew his attention from the table. His mother, again. Could she not leave with dignity? Bile burned in the back of Ferdinand’s throat. No, there was no dignity left in Aegir. Not in his mother, never in his father, and all those ceremonial shells on the table had only masked the rot. Tenants squeezed of every last penny, treaties that diverted all profit into the family coffer while roads and bridges crumbled away beneath their feet, a regional guard as drunk on power as any bandit troupe, an overflowing table as the people starved, and that blinding arrogance that declared it Right, and Just, and Divine.

But Goddess, he had tried, he had _tried._ If Edelgard had only given him the time to prove himself...

Maybe she had, and Ferdinand had thrown down a glove in challenge and proved he could complete his half of the weeding much more efficiently than she could ever dream. So many boasts for the final Fool of Aegir! He would be listed in the history books for nothing more than his exemplary weeding abilities, if not much less. A name on a page, a period on a thousand years of bloated honor. And no more.

Ferdinand had just enough presence of mind to announce that he could be found at the stables when the merchant finished his notes. He strolled out of the hall until the click of his boots went dull on the interior carpets, then tore off his jabot with a rasp for breath, trying desperately to get air back into his lungs, to escape the hulking corpse of his name following with every step. 

His feet pulled him toward the stables as they always had, the same flight from the mansion to freedom ever since he had his first lesson at the age of four. He stepped out into the sun, duty fulfilled, and he didn’t look back.

Would they sell the library, or keep it? Ferdinand tried to picture Hubert walking the hall and evaluating the worth of Duchess Aegir’s scandalous novel collection. The image brought him no joy, but it would, someday — he would keep balling up the world’s baffling questions and beating them against the wall of incomprehension until something broke. Hubert smashing the tea sets, taking scissors to the wardrobes, setting goats free to gobble up the egregious sins against velvet. 

Absurdly, he even felt jealous of _that._

Ferdinand wiped at his face, stalling in the field to stare up at the sun as long as he could manage. A case of heat stroke, it had to be. He’d stood too close to the Flame Emperor for too long, and now he’d lose even his mind, his white-knuckled grip on reality. It happened so often in his mother’s novels, didn’t it? The hero, the damsel, the sympathetic villain would experience some dread trauma and wander off in a fugue state. Fanciful, trite, a desperate plot point to swing the narrative back on course. He hated that he could almost understand it now, that stumble between his thoughts and his feet, the chill of his skin that hadn’t faded since they rode out of Garreg Mach, the drift of his thoughts like feathers to the wind, all the world spinning in somebody else’s nightmare that wasn’t, couldn’t be, meant for him. 

And that venomous echo of Hubert’s voice in his ear, spitting the word until it became true: _Sedition._

Louder and louder as he reached the stables, passing by the rows of handsome, hearty stallions and his mother’s sleek, elegant mares, until he reached the far end with his, his…

_Your worthless assembly of braying leather?_

Thank the Goddess that the grooms had all headed up to the house to assist with the inventory and weren’t there to see him wipe at his face with shaking hands, just a small boy thrown from his pony even now. It was his fault. His fault for not being better, for not being what Edelgard needed in an adviser, for not obeying his father when he snarled about buying useless horseflesh. 

Because that was what they were, objectively. Half-blind old Knave, the stallion he’d learned to ride on, still happy to take the field for slow jaunts at the ripe age of twenty-seven. Lame little Freckle, who’d never taken a rider in her life, his first purchase at the age of eight. First of many, when he’d found out how often people put down the mares and geldings that didn’t pass muster, windswept or wry-nosed or simply unwanted, all of them with the sweetest names a little boy could invent for a pretty pony: Buttercup, Princess, Casagranda. A dozen disasters that he’d hand-fed and trained as best he could, that adored him without ever knowing what cruelty he’d spared them.

And now they’d go to the butcher, they’d be made into _glue._

Freckle stuck her head over the gate of her stall, nickering softly in hopes of a treat or a rubdown of her sore joints. 

“Hold on, sweetheart,” Ferdinand whispered at her, voice cracking. He slipped off his jacket, folded it neatly and laid it onto one of the supply shelves, rolled up his sleeves, then slipped into her stall.

At once she leaned against him with her full weight, her own brand of hug that she offered each and every time he came to see her. Ferdinand buried his face against her neck and held her up as long as he could manage. He’d known plenty of horses to lean against him affectionately, but something in the way Freckle did it made him think her mother had tried to support her that way, and now she pressed herself to him as if to say he was her family, and she trusted him to hold her fragile weight. 

When she stepped away to start nuzzling at his chest and face instead, he went for the brush to give her a gentle once-over. “No poetry today, Freckle. I lack the…the heart for it.” All of him aching, the silence most of all. _My princess is lovely, my princess is fair,_ and for however much he told Manuela about his childish dreams, he’d never told her where he’d practiced his raggedy lyric.

Ferdinand wasn’t fool enough to think Freckle understood when he stopped every few minutes to press the heels of his palms against his eyes, trying to knit himself back together, but at least if she couldn’t understand, she couldn’t blame him, either. He had always been enough for her, simple creature that she was.

“Stand,” he commanded once the brush was away. She knew that meant not to get antsy when he crouched to sit on the floor, his hands stroking gently at her legs to check for swelling or other spots of worry. Ferdinand eased his thumbs into some of the tense tendons around her weaker joints, knowing exactly which were safe to massage and which would only cause her more pain.

“Stand,” Ferdinand said again when he finished, because he didn’t know if she’d like the next bit. But he’d passed his Faith practicum, and he’d spent hours sitting in the stables with Marianne, hashing out the specifics of what he wanted to do and figuring out whether Dorte would endure it. 

Freckle kicked at once when the first faint touch of Heal crackled down her back leg, missing him by a hair.

“Shhhh, gentle, love. I only want to help.” Ferdinand let his hands fall loosely into his lap and waited for her to settle. “My fault, I should have brought you a treat to reinforce…”

“Sir?”

He froze, then sagged backwards with the slow inevitability of melting wax, letting his head clunk against the wall. Soon enough the merchant’s indifferent face appeared above the gate, and the man stared down at the once-legitimate heir to Aegir in all his half-dressed, tear-stained, mutinous glory.

The merchant cleared his throat as if he saw disenfranchised noble striplings standing on the ledge every day. “I’ve finished the inventory for your review. If you wish to contest any of the valuations—”

“I do not.”

That put a flicker of shock into the merchant’s otherwise cool expression. “Then I require only a signature.”

So simple to sign one’s life away. Ferdinand wondered what his father had done that led them to this point, which blighted piece of paper he’d signed the family name to and doomed them all. But even in those terms, he could make no sense of it. Edelgard never worked alongside Duke Aegir. She was not her father, and she knew Ferdinand was not his, so why, _why_ would the pieces fall like this, the game board overturned as the new Emperor marched to war, a vision of Edelgard standing there in the stables, eyes burning with unmitigated cruelty as she demanded he butcher his horses.

That tone of her voice when she said his name, _Fer-di-nand,_ distantly fond and frustrated beyond belief, like there was something he refused to understand and always had. But what?

Ferdinand dragged his eyes back to the man’s proffered paperwork, then away to Freckle’s warm brown eyes. “Do they have you executing the sale?”

“Yes, sir.”

“However much the collection is worth—and do not tell me, I honestly do not ever wish to know—is it enough to buy back a horse? With food and board fees for a year, say. How many horses would that—”

“Five.”

All or nothing, it had to be. Ferdinand couldn’t play favorites at the butcher block. He tilted back his head, staring at the ceiling and praying for the Goddess to sink him into the earth, to not have to make the choice. “There are twelve in this building that will not fetch you any grand sum. If I put two thousand gold towards each, would that buy them more options? You could take a lower bid, for a farm somewhere, and you would still make your profit. Is there enough for that?”

The merchant stared at him like he’d gone mad, like he had all the horns and tail that Lorenz kept so studiously tucked away. “I cannot promise a placement, but it would…go some ways toward that goal. The sum from the sale will sufficiently cover it.”

“Thank you.” Ferdinand summoned his most dashing smile, a pale echo of warmth. “Split the remainder equitably among the staff. As many weeks’ pay as you can squeeze out.”

The man gawked as Ferdinand rose to his feet, brushed the straw from his pants, and leaned against Freckle’s shoulders last time. “This will be your sole payment from the estate—”

“I am aware. Papers, please.” 

Ferdinand signed with a flourish.

  


* * *

  


It rained the whole trip back to Enbarr, an utterly poetic downpour that nearly granted him a glimpse of catharsis. He’d introduced himself to the other travelers in the carriage as Ferdinand, no last name, and sat staring out the window in lost silence as the lands of Aegir rolled away. 

His family’s insignia burned in his breast pocket, a molten agony; it was all the merchant had given him for the road. Some legal qualm about selling off an actual proof of legitimacy even if the house itself was dead. Ferdinand didn’t think about it, didn’t let himself turn it over and over in his hands, only watched the rain pour down until the carriage got stuck in the mud and squished all dramatic brooding into the muck. Ferdinand leapt out to help the driver free them, split the sole off a boot and ruined his jacket for his troubles, and spent the remainder of the ride bundled under spare horse blankets in a corner of the carriage.

It had been a very Caspar thing, jumping to help without a care for nobility or appearances. And Caspar had always lived without security or reward, all on his own righteous merits — so why couldn’t Ferdinand? Of course, the second son of Bergliez also had funds and connections and a bosom companion that would never abandon him, but, well, it was awfully difficult to imagine Caspar not being Caspar even with all those things taken away. 

Ferdinand would simply need to be Ferdinand without all the accoutrements. He would stroll back to the palace without a care, smile in Hubert’s sneering face, and…

Sneezed, tucking his face against the scratchy warmth of the blanket. What he wouldn’t give for a hot cup of tea, any blend at all. Enbarr had so many teashops, maybe one would take him as an apprentice tea…monger. He could rise through the ranks, build an empire of tea, control all the contracts and set fair prices for all but the imperial palace, make the Emperor’s lapdog come begging on his knees for enough Bergamot for a single tea service, then laugh in his sallow face. 

Vengeance, just another thing Ferdinand wasn’t terribly good at. Was that the reason they’d ousted him from the war table and kept mum about all their plans? _Alright, Ferdinand, time to make the Church pay for its crimes. Any ideas beyond singing off-key at choir practice? No?_

Because there must have been a reason. Everything always circled back around to that stone-cold certainty sitting in his gut like the pit of a Morfis plum: Edelgard had a reason, and if Ferdinand could only grasp hold of it, he’d have his true north again, not this wheeling dervish of a broken compass. Games, politics, all of that rot was nothing more than a distraction. Edelgard followed cold, clear logic, so he would do the same, and once he understood her rationale he could decide his own course. He congratulated himself on a plan so eminently sensible from every angle. 

The clouds cleared by the time they reached Enbarr, sun peeking out to begin warming the drenched streets. Ferdinand’s spirits rose with every glimmer of sunshine — yes, this was it, no more despair and dumbstruck wandering, no more metaphorical muck, only a buoyant radiance to bring this troubling arc to its conclusion! 

He bid the driver farewell and paused to straighten his jabot in the hazy reflection of a shop window.

Stopped.

A prickle along his spine, ice coursing his veins. That couldn’t be him. Hair a matted mess plastered against his neck, untrimmed and untamed. His shirt splattered with mud, the buttons of one cuff long gone, his jacket abandoned somewhere for rags, no tie at his neck. Slacks wrinkled, boot falling to pieces, all of him an utter mess that he could attribute to a nasty wrestling match with a mud-slick carriage, but nothing would explain the bloodshot, empty eyes, the burnt out misery carved into every inch of his skin.

He couldn’t go to the palace like this. No room at the barracks, no clothes for court, no coin left in his pocket. Not a single friendly soul left in the city. 

He should have saddled a horse and called it Sedition, ridden as far as he could in any direction until the land gave way to the sea and swallowed him up, pride and all. 

No. Ferdinand cast about for a rain barrel, using the freezing water to splash his face and scrub the grease from his hair. _Ferdinand von Aegir does not give quarter to despair. Remember what the Professor told you? You need more than the first plan that comes to mind — consider the first five instead._

If there were no friendly souls left, then he would have to accept an unfriendly one. 

“Miss Arnault doesn’t work here anymore.” The doorman at the Mittlefrank crossed his arms in a way that clearly said Ferdinand would find himself with more than a bruised ego in the next five minutes if he didn’t clear out. “Hasn’t sang for over a year. Strange for a _fan_ not to know.”

“I assure you, I am _not_ a fan,” Ferdinand pressed, only to realize how much worse that looked, some raggedy young man desperately chasing after Dorothea, after everything she’d told him about her patrons. “I mean to say, I truly do know her—”

“Sure you do, kid.”

Ferdinand curled his hands into fists, then shook them out at once, turning away with a wretched laugh as he raked fingers through his wet hair. He’d rather starve than ever prove himself the sort of man Dorothea believed him to be. 

Without a performance running at the opera house that evening, there were no crowds to prevent Ferdinand from sitting down on the grand marble steps. When the weather was fair, one could stare down the promenade all the way to the hill of the imperial palace in the distance. He rested his head on his knees instead, hands tucked about his ankles, and tried to figure out plan number six.

“Oh, Ferdie,” came a sigh somewhere around plan sixteen, which was more about figuring out where he could wash dishes for an evening meal, or slip into a stable to bunk with the horses and barn cats. “This isn’t what I expected when they told me some forlorn suitor of mine refused to leave the steps. I thought I’d at least get to practice my Meteor, blow off a little steam.”

“I’m sorry,” he croaked, head too heavy to raise. 

Dorothea sat down on the steps next to him. “What for?”

“For bothering you.”

She touched his shoulder, the way she might for one of her friends, like he was so pitiful now that it overcame her hatred, and shame squirmed in his chest worse than ever. “…You’re not bothering me, Ferdie. We’ve been worried. Nobody knew where you disappeared to, and…Hubie seemed to think you weren’t coming back.”

A laugh shook through him, or maybe a sob, a tremble so sharp that Dorothea took her hand away, like he’d shaken her off, rejected that one tiny bit of pity she’d granted him. “Of course. Of course he did.” Ferdinand had done everything asked, jumped through every hoop like a damned show dog, and none of it mattered. Nothing mattered.

Dorothea sat silently for a long moment, and then a warm weight dropped over his shoulders. Her coat. All of him screamed to throw it off, to not let a lady dirty her belongings for his sake, but his hands slid up to curl into the soft wool, to pull it closer around him so he could breathe in the warmth of her care. He hadn’t realized the cold had crawled in and made such a home in him.

“I, I know you hate me but I—”

“Ferdie.” Her hand back on his shoulder, squeezing gently. “We’ll always have room for you. Just come home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) I completely butchered the timeline and thought everyone at the school got the "hey Edelgard's Emperor now, and our parents are all in jail, cool cool" notice earlier than they did, resulting in two weeks simmering at the school before the disaster mission...this is not how it goes in Crimson Flower, but I was already committed to the Lorenz scene by the time I realized. If he wasn't recruited, please imagine his dad sent him to deliver some negotiation letter to Edelgard and that's why he's there. I just...love them being friends while having complete misunderstandings of each other in school phase.  
  
Lorenz: you’re just like me, so your father must have prepped you to be a political weapon, too  
Ferdie: you’re just like me, so your father must have shelved and sheltered you, too
> 
> 2) Every single one of Hubert's spies at the Aegir estate: why is the boss shooting himself in the foot....
> 
> Beloved fanart!!!  
[He hadn’t realized the cold had crawled in and made such a home in him.](https://azure--sketches.tumblr.com/post/188278978548/for-goldenthreads-fic-coming-of-age) \- [Aoki](https://azure--sketches.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ferdinand hides in a blanket fort. Emotionally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Assume Ferdinand hit his B-supports with all his classmates during school phase, except for Edelgard & Hubert, who remain on friendship probation.

  


* * *

  


“Again.”

“Could we perhaps—” Ferdinand heaved in a breath, felt it shudder all the way into his chest. 

“Again,” Petra repeated. Her right foot slid forward into a half-gate position, the point of her spear drifting lazily along the ground to her left. Once Ferdinand reluctantly mirrored her guard she began to count: One, two…

Three, Ferdinand stepped forward and raised his spear point directly into the path of her guard.

Four, Petra swung into a counter. Ferdinand let the force of her spear break his position, twisted right to void—

And went tumbling backwards into the grass, the butt of her spear a solid ache in his sternum. 

_“Ferdinand._ You are still breaking wrist instead of letting go!” Petra stared down at him with a twisted frown. “Are you not understanding my instructions?”

“I understand,” he wheezed. He made no attempt to stand. “And I am _trying.”_ It was not at all easy to unlearn nearly a decade of muscle memory, and all continental lance styles demanded you keep both hands on the damn stick at all times. One did not simply drop a hand and commit oneself to the whims of gravity!

Except in Brigid, where hunting spears were the norm, heavy armor a rarity, and a javelin could not be abandoned simply because the tip had shattered. Petra knew all matter of frankly terrifying staff techniques that would only bolster his own skills, make him more valuable as an ally, if he could only let go.

She crouched down next to him and, to his horror, felt his forehead to ensure he was not properly ill. Her spear wove and spun behind her back as she waited, a whirl of movement that drew Ferdinand’s gaze and appreciation alike. 

“Perhaps I should practice the forms on my own first.”

“No.”

He frowned, mirroring her confusion from earlier. “No?”

“You are still thinking too much. You are much stronger with heart and…” Petra tapped at his chest, clear of his budding bruises, then reached to squeeze his shoulders and pull her hands along his biceps. “These.”

Ferdinand finally pulled himself upright, if only to hang his head with a huff of despair. “Please do not question my intelligence. I am rather fragile at the moment, if you recall.”

So pitiful, in truth, that he feared he had permanently lowered his worth in Petra’s keen eyes. She was the future of Brigid! Ferdinand wanted to stand aside her, not fumble in her train, tripping himself on his own spear like a raw recruit after she had been so very steadfast in his support.

From the moment Dorothea dragged him to sanctuary the night before, Petra had been his constant companion. She was the one to cajole Dorothea into warming the bathwater for him to finally scrub the mud from his skin, to select the warmest of the household rugs to drape over his shoulders like a hero’s mantle, and to brew him pot after pot of tea, even sacrificing one of her dried tea blooms from home, letting him lean forward in awe to watch the roselles unfurl into wine-dark glory. It made him feel distinctly small in a way he did not wish to dwell on, but recognized at once.

When Ferdinand was a boy, his riding instructor often allowed him to ride through the outlying villages and tenant farms so he could strengthen his grasp on the regional topography. He stopped to greet every citizen of bountiful Aegir, playing the Good Duke and asking about the harvest (no, still out of season), the livestock (no, the goal was not as many fluffy lambs as possible), and if they would come to his birthday party if he put on a feast (…no). One day a sheepdog had trotted right up and clamped its slobbering jaws around Ferdinand’s entire wrist while he stood there gabbing. The adults screamed, the tutor froze, the shepherd boys begged for mercy well beyond his capacity. But the pup was unequivocally polite, holding Ferdinand with stunning gentleness as it tugged him away from a vengeful donkey in the nearby pen, and he had always remembered that feeling of power restrained, honed into something that spoke even louder. 

Herders did that sometimes, dulling their devastating fangs to pull wandering young back into the fold. Wolves must, too. Petra certainly had, and it made Ferdinand think of Freckle, just a little, not enough to prick his heart back on those thorns, but enough to be so very thankful that someone still considered him their herd.

Petra laughed at him, however, so perhaps he was merely the herd jester. 

“No! Too much thinking in skull is…many fish in pond too small.”

His shoulders sagged. “That is distressingly accurate, my friend.”

She pushed to her feet and immediately offered a hand to pull him up. “Only cure is training. Again.”

“…oh, very well,” Ferdinand said, tucking away his touched smile as he regained his feet. “May we try from the opposite direction? I will watch you execute the maneuver first. Ten and ten.”

“No. Your difficulty is all hands. If we are training same way, there will be same result. Let me think of different setting play…” Petra twirled her weapon twice, feeling her way through a set of positions that looked very much like the cutting drills Ferdinand learned in front of the training dummy. On the third whirl, she dropped her hand to cross from back to front, then yanked backwards with both hands the moment the spear passed parallel to her shoulders.

Had anyone stood between Petra and her weapon, it would have broken their neck in an instant. Ferdinand gaped.

“Ten and ten?” Petra grinned.

One, two, Ferdinand’s eyes fixed on Petra’s hands as she demonstrated, the whole world narrowing down to nothing but her tempo. Three, four, the slow twirl of the spear out of measure, a building of momentum behind his back. Five, six, the hand switch, forcing himself to drop his grip or smack himself in the head for his failures. Seven, eight, matching the movement to his breathing, his breathing to his feet. Nine, ten, and he began again, on his own this time with Petra’s eyes sharp upon him.

“Yes! You are having understanding! Now ten more. I will be standing here.”

Before Ferdinand could blink, a head of hibiscus braids slipped into the gap between him and his spear. Petra tilted back her head and pointed to a spot on the graceful slope of her neck. “Be aiming here with swiftness and force.”

“I am not prepared to murder you in the middle of the day!” Ferdinand did not shriek, though his voice wavered heinously throughout.

“Murder is every time of day,” Petra intoned gravely. “Now please be murdering me.”

“Petra!”

“Be murdering me slowly.” She shot him a lopsided smile, head turned just enough for him to see its curl.

Ferdinand opened his mouth to argue, his sense of responsibility screaming a war cry against his duty to obey all instructors, then shut it with grim resignation. It was Petra. She would never stake Brigid’s future on how well Ferdinand could throttle her with a wooden pole.

Still, he moved slower than every run previous. A nonchalant twirl behind his back, the spear coming to rest in his hands, and then a steady draw of it backwards, perfectly horizontal, to touch gently at Petra’s bared throat.

“Again.”

He had the feel of it now, and when the spear hit its final parallel, Ferdinand jerked it back to rest a hand’s breadth away from Petra’s throat, perfectly placed, as she ducked and pushed into his elbows, jamming the weapon smack into his own jaw. _“Petra!”_

In a moment, she had him flat on the ground, knees braced to either side of his torso as she forced the spear’s weight down into the soft flesh of his throat. “Yield,” she commanded, the strangest sing-song tone of mockery lacing the word.

Ferdinand raised a hand as if to tap out. One quick twist of his shoulder brought the spear into a rough, painful bind, but that and a strong kick managed to unseat Petra from her prize. He dodged the well-placed knee that followed and rolled until he had his feet under him again. Alas, he had sacrificed the spear in his retreat—no use wrenching his shoulder out of its socket—and Petra now held both, gazing at him with wild abandon writ clear in the shine of her eyes, her hair mussed from a hasty roll of her own. 

Grappling was neither of their strong suits, but if it was a challenge she wanted, it was a challenge she would get. 

  


* * *

  


As those spears crossed over him with the X heavy at his neck, Ferdinand knew nothing but the burn of his lungs, a fierce and joyous ache in every grass-stained inch of him. The sun radiantly outlined Petra’s face above his, like a blessing, like the last thing a brigand ever saw in this life, and Ferdinand’s laughter thrummed with every wheezing rasp of air, giddy and weighed down only by the drip of sweat along his brow.

“There is my Ferdinand!” Petra grinned, triumphant even as she gasped for her own ragged breaths. “You are like sun’s blinding arrow. You cannot be straying for clouds.”

“I do not yield,” Ferdinand rasped, one inch from having his air cut off entirely.

Petra only laughed at that, and tossed aside the splintered, useless spears before rolling off him and settling in the grass herself. “No,” she agreed. Her hands rested on her stomach, eyes fluttering closed as she drank in the sunshine. “You never do.”

Envy plagued him more than the defeat—to be so confident in one’s skin to simply lie under the heavens and do nothing more than breathe? Petra never ceased to astound him, and Ferdinand turned his head to watch her instead of the open sky, unable to exist so effortlessly. 

Was it a blessing from those strange spirits of her lands? She bore that mark beneath her eye with greater comfort, greater pride, than he did the crest lurking in his blood. Not that he would ever voice such sacrilege! He thanked the Goddess and all the Saints for their mark upon him with every sunrise, but to flaunt such a connection so publicly… His parents had paraded him around the local chapels of Aegir one spring when he was old enough to tempt Cichol’s crest into activating, and Ferdinand remembered little beyond the weight of so many eyes upon him. He certainly had not felt worthy, or blessed, or proud. A destiny was nothing until you fulfilled it, and he had only been a little boy wearing itchy clothes while repeating whatever the adults told him to.

For all his professions of faith, he had sworn nothing as passionately as the prayers carved into Petra’s very skin. Of course the divine would bless a devotion like that. All Ferdinand had ever done was bend a knee and point a sword against the heavens. 

But no, in truth there could be no comparison. If Ferdinand had been held up by robbers and fleeced of all worldly possessions, then Petra had been abandoned on a deserted island, demonic beasts nipping her heels, and simply pulled herself up into the trees to whittle a knife and start hunting. Did she, too, call it _politics_ in her heart of hearts, or did it wear the Empire’s face? An imperial axe cleaving away her parents, her kinsmen, her country, her language and worth—yet her sense of self never wavered, immutable. 

Ferdinand could not begin to explain what his own pride was doing at the moment, but he was awfully, terribly proud to know her. 

_Does she follow Edelgard, or merely the Brigid carrot dangled on their stick?_ His fingers curled into fists at his side, the grass slick where it poked between his knuckles. Was that the trick? If he played nice, asked no questions, fought the war like a good little soldier, then he would reap every possible reward? Aegir pinned back upon his breast like a tin badge, shiny and worthless. Or those golden fields held to ransom, his people suffering, starving, while faceless mismanagement squandered the harvest. 

_Which carrot for Ferdinand? Such a picky breed. Shall we dangle his honor or his compassion today?_

Slow clapping from the edge of the courtyard drew his attention before he managed to sort his thoughts back into order. 

_“My,_ Petra, top marks for that little pep talk. You’ll have him right as rain by week’s end at this rate.” Dorothea’s eyes swept from Ferdinand’s face on down to his chest and back up again, dismayed. “We do need him clothed in a bit more than grass and mud, though.”

Ferdinand shot to his feet. “I will change immediately—”

“Into what?”

Even this newly stained shirt was a castoff from the household staff, and Ferdinand had nary a spare. His ears burned, expecting the haughty sort of cut down his mother might deliver to an incompetent new scullery maid, for Dorothea’s strange kindness to dry up and blow away into the wind.

“We really need to get that sorted,” Dorothea said to herself instead, taking Petra’s arm when the other woman passed by. “Come along, Ferdie. The Countess is nearly home and we need to put all those rugs back where they belong.”

“They are excellent warmth!” Petra agreed, happily ignoring that she moved every single one of them in the first place. 

Ferdinand, who had trained all his life in the proper etiquette for introductions, visits, house parties, soirees, unexpectedly overstayed welcomes, court appearances, holidays at distant relatives of lesser rank, and all manner of other highly regimented noble interactions, had not the slightest idea how to handle the unparalleled uniqueness of the situation he found himself in.

As far as he could gather, it went something like this: the townhouse belonged to (the former) Countess Varley, Bernadetta’s absentee mother, who had once paid to have her daughter bundled into a rug and now opened her doors to all the displaced young women of the Black Eagles. She kept a large, well-furnished home that bestowed a veneer of legitimacy to the magical research lab in the basement, and despite the full complement of staff quarters, only a single servant-cum-apprentice actually remained in her employ. She had eagerly backed Edelgard after the coronation, loathed her own husband with a venom more at home in a Vestra’s mouth, and now served as a makeshift regent for Varley until Bernadetta could be convinced to assume the title in her own right. 

She had also nearly been Ferdinand’s mother-in-law, though he intended to keep that matter well under wraps. 

Dorothea piled another rug into his arms, directing him to hold it high while she and Petra beat the dust and newly shed vibrant array of hair out of it. “Okay, Ferdie. This one goes in the…parlor? The red parlor.” She tapped her lip.

“I believe that is the,” he choked on the dust, tapping fiercely against his chest. “Sitting room!”

“Right. You know what? How about we get you a pen and paper, and you can make up fancy little labels for each of the fancy little rooms.”

Ferdinand frowned, then pulled it back, evening out his lips to careful nonchalance. He forgot to smooth out the wounded furrow of his brow. “I did not mean it as a correction. There is another parlor on the second floor with red drapery, and I would not want them to be mistaken.”

“They are mistaken,” Petra sighed. “Ferdinand, you are having sharper eye for…” She trailed off and looked to Dorothea for help.

“The overbearing interior design of the chronically well-bred?” Dorothea offered with a flourish.

Petra beamed. “Exactly! You call it…fussy, yes?”

“Give me a moment,” Ferdinand sighed in defeat. A fine weave on the carpet, softer than one would leave in a room meant for regular public business. Likely the second floor, then, but the white accents in the pattern made little sense for that parlor with the drapery, and overly matching pieces found little favor these days. Perhaps the library? He had glimpsed it only briefly, but if he recalled correctly, the floorboards were a soft golden oak. “From the library, I believe. Or at the very least it will not appear out of place in those surroundings.”

They rolled up the carpet into a plush log that they balanced between Ferdinand and Petra’s shoulders, and sure enough, it fit the faintly discolored rectangle on the library’s wooden floor. Dorothea shot him a funny look as they marched back to deal with the next one.

She had been sending him a lot of funny looks, and it was not beginning to grate, per se—nothing from Dorothea could truly be considered _grating,_ be her voice soft or shrill—but he tired of dancing on eggshells. It was no secret that his stay here had a limit. A house full of accomplished young women was no place for a disgraced nobleman to set up shop, and as soon as the gossips found him, emboldened malice would dog his steps wherever he went. Dorothea of all people knew the dangers closing in.

“How have you found Lady Varley?” Ferdinand hazarded the question as he and Petra maneuvered another lush rug into its usual borders. It was only polite to inquire after their host, and if he could learn any of her habits, perhaps he could manage a small token of appreciation. “Is she—”

“Mad?” 

_“What?”_

Dorothea had her back to them, working to realign a portrait they had knocked askew with the rug, but Ferdinand had heard this tone often enough to feel the exhausted chill of her gaze as the world offered her another cliche, badly written scene. “That’s the rumor, isn’t it? Because why else would someone run away from the luxury of a rich husband—”

“I should think Bernadetta’s father is reason enough,” he said to the perfectly square corner of the rug. 

“What is Lady Varley angry about?” Petra asked. “We can be helping her! As thank you for our house.”

Dorothea smiled, all charm as she smoothed down Petra’s sleeve and took her by the hand. “Don’t you worry about it, Petra. Edie’s already got that all handled. All we’ve got to do is keep the house from coming apart.”

The drawn curtains admitted a clear view of the palace hill in the distance. Ferdinand squinted against the light, thinking about carrots again. _If you lock up my husband, I will support you through anything._

“Ferdie, come along. We need someone to brew the tea.”

“With pleasure,” he hummed and tied the curtains shut.

By the state of the pantry, the Countess preferred coffee to tea, and Ferdinand had to mix the sparse remains of two separate cannisters to manage enough for a full table of four. A bit of citrus smoothed over the awkwardness of his makeshift blend. He filled the tray with biscuits and teacups and headed to the parlor. 

A new voice tittered pleasantries within, and Ferdinand’s knees locked, every memory of his mother’s tea parties rushing back into focus. Ladies so noble and refined they drifted above mere mortals like the pristine petals of a cherry blossom tree, and he in his finest vest, his mother’s dearest doll, serving pastries on a gilded tray as he strained his ears for every tale of the opera, of the lavish balls, of the latest fairytale engagement.

He could not force his feet past the doorway, keenly aware of his grass-stained knees and hastily pinned collar. One of the buttons had abandoned him during their afternoon brawl. How could he show his face to a noblewoman in such a state? In her own home! He had not even met the standard of decorum expected of the most menial servant. The porcelain rattled on the tray, a soft clink of gut-wrenching shame locking its collar around him, and he took a step back despite himself.

_“Oh,”_ came the softest voice, and a moment later a second pair of hands helped steady the tray. Ineffectually, since Bernadetta’s hands trembled as much as his own. “Ferdinand…y-you’re really here! Let me—um, if it’s o-okay, I can help with the…ohh, Bernie, it’s _tea,_ he doesn’t need you to…”

“Thank you for the assistance,” he whispered back, paper-thin smile firmly in place.

Together they managed to transfer the tea onto the parlor table. The conversation fell silent as they did, the only noise the dry rasp of pastry as Petra plucked a scone from the top of the pile. Bernadetta retreated back behind her mother’s chair the moment the tray hit the table, staring fixedly down at the floor. 

“Countess Varley,” he greeted, then pitched into the deepest bow he could manage. 

Dorothea laughed and buried her face in Petra’s shoulder, who had jolted forward as if Ferdinand meant to overbalance and collapse in front of a carefully cultivated audience.

Ferdinand ignored them, the burn on his cheeks, the feeling of sweat streaking his palms without any gloves to mask them, all of it, focusing only on the whorls of the carpet beneath their feet. He had never learned the niceties of lower nobles, of non-nobles, and all at once he knew how all those civilians must have felt when the little duke tried to drag them into danger beyond their ken. Was it not easier to prostrate and beg than risk the delicacies of the labyrinthine peerage?

“My sincerest thanks for allowing me shelter in your home. I realize what complications this may pose for you. While I swear to you that I have no intentions of forsaking,” he caught the name before it slipped free barren of its honors, “—Her Majesty’s good will, I cannot allow my presence to bring any true danger to your door. Your daughter is a dear companion of my school days, and—”

Bernadetta squealed, and Ferdinand glanced up in alarm, then ducked his head back down so quickly he nearly needed Petra’s steadying hand this time. 

“—And I could never forgive myself should I benefit improperly from that friendship, much less if it harmed her. Please. I have no more ability to repay such kindness than the stable boy I must appear to you. I make no claims otherwise. If it behooves you to—”

“Is he always like this?” The Countess stage-whispered behind her hand, and Dorothea snorted gracelessly.

“Yes! He has much earnestness.” 

The sheer pride in Petra’s tone cut through Ferdinand like a knife through an onion, the tears welling up without any hope of control.

“P-please stand up, Ferdinand,” Bernadetta begged, sounding teary-eyed herself.

He did so, if only to tip his eyes to the ceiling instead.

A gloved hand tapped him on the shoulder. The Countess stood even shorter than Bernadetta, barely scraping five feet, and looked none too amused by Ferdinand’s mortifying histrionics. Everything about her screamed efficiency, from the polish of her boots to the tight bob of her bun, not an inch of room for messy hangers-on. “Young Master Ferdinand, I haven’t heard a speech like that since your fifth birthday. _If it behooves my honored guests to partake of this cake with me,_ was it? You truly have not changed an—well, you’ve changed by several inches, I suppose, but the matter stands.”

“You’re a danger to no one,” she continued before he could croak out a word. “Save Miss Dorothea’s sanity, as I hear it?”

Bernadetta and Ferdinand gasped in turn at the impropriety; Dorothea only shrugged in general agreement.

“If you need boarding, then you will stay here. The house is open to all you young generals who need it. Just keep in mind that Miss Dorothea holds the keys with my full trust. Any questions?” The Countess narrowed her eyes when Ferdinand opened his mouth.

Undeterred, he stood a bit straighter, crossed his arms behind his back, and argued, “Have you no concerns about proper chaperonage? I cannot in good faith allow my presence to attach any intimations of impropriety to those around me.” A princess of Brigid, the already troubled Lady Varley, and the Mittelfrank’s brightest star: no, he could not risk any of them. 

“Ferdie. We’re in the _army._ It’s a little late for that. So unless you’re planning to tomcat yourself around…” Dorothea lifted a delicate eyebrow, and the higher it rose, the redder Ferdinand’s face burned.

“Tomcat?” Petra repeated in confusion. “Which cat is named—”

“You know those lucky lads at the monastery who gave us all of those darling kittens? Well, when a nobleman…” She leaned in to whisper in Petra’s ear.

Bernadetta had disappeared from sight. Whether she had fainted at the current conversation held in front of her _mother,_ or merely ducked down behind the chair, Ferdinand wished desperately to join her.

The Countess yawned. “Settle it among yourselves. And Ferdinand?” She pushed her untouched teacup towards him, breaking the careful alignment of the four cups among the four women. “If you’re going to serve, I prefer coffee.”

“Yes,” he demurred with bowed head, though she wandered off before he managed to mangle her title once more. _Countess_ or _Lady_ from his worthless mouth? And of course she preferred coffee, he was not so unobservant as that, he merely had no practice working the coffee press. Perfection mattered not if the taste did not suit, he supposed. He would make certain to track down her apprentice come morning to learn the workings of those beans most foul. 

…Heinously improper to partake of someone else’s tea, untouched or no. Ferdinand’s hands still reached for that dainty cup, one curling about the ornate handle, the other forsaking the saucer to cradle its bracing warmth directly. 

A blur of purple fluttered across the room as Bernadetta retreated to the seat beside Petra, drawing her legs up to her chest a moment later. _Good,_ he thought with considerable relief. Let her make a haven here, a true home, with family and friends inside the walls with her. 

Her mother did not understand. They were no longer children to be fostered at one another’s summer homes, their lives dictated by the whims of their parents. They made their own decisions, and his classmates would choose rightly, would see him as they always had — a bother, a nuisance, a problem.

Ferdinand took another long sip of fragrant heat, eyes fluttering shut in momentary peace, then set down the teacup with nary a clink. The judges of his trial had assembled.

“Consider this an official Black Eagles meeting,” Dorothea began, preemptively skewering Ferdinand with a sour frown before he could contest the definition of _official_ or _meeting._ “We all know Hubie would just vote with Edie, so that makes seven votes total and four of them sitting here. That’s a—”

The word wiggled on Ferdinand’s tongue with all the grace of an eager puppy. Dorothea knew it. He knew that she knew it. She lifted her cup to that deepening frown, took a long sip, then another, and when she finally set down her cup without a word from the opposition, she gestured in begrudging invitation.

“Quorum,” he announced, relishing every vowel.

“What he said. Four votes to three. Plenty for business.”

Petra cocked her head. “What are we voting on?”

“Ohhh, please let’s n-not make any big decisions, okay? One war is enough, right? Right?”

“Ferdie’s not asking us to go to war for him,” Dorothea assured Bernadetta. Her eyes never left Ferdinand.

But you could, choked the words in his throat. _Surely if they followed Edelgard’s mad war, they would consider a voice of reason against her, especially one so innocent, so wronged as you._ As if he planned to show up here reeking of a mud slick, calculated every lost sliver of his brittle dignity, and played the tragedy to win them to his side. _Why pick a side when you have your own?_

His father’s voice.

It would not do to vomit in the middle of the Varleys’ parlor, shaking with anguish and—dehydration, hopefully. Ferdinand poured himself another cup of tea and forced himself to sit in one of the free chairs.

“I do not believe we have any voting matters at present,” he said, not meeting Dorothea’s gaze. “I would rather we meet as…colleagues, if I may be so bold. I realize the situation is unconventional at best. Your natural inclinations towards generosity may have precluded a more rational response.”

“Ferdinand. We are not being diplomats. We are being friends.”

He glanced up at them—Petra’s frustration, Bernadetta’s stark concern, Dorothea’s wavering veneer of disinterest—and his shoulders sagged inch by inch until he finally sank back into the armchair. “I. I know that. And friends support each other. That is exactly why I must question the rationality of my staying here.”

Blank bewilderment.

“Here,” Ferdinand tried again, staring back at the tea set. “In Bernadetta’s home. Where she feels safe. When I am patently, provably unsafe.”

And he proved it then and there, for the words made Bernadetta burst into breathless tears. Petra wrapped an arm around her at once, and all of the women folded into each other, those nebulous and utterly impenetrable bonds of friendship holding them fast, safe, protected. As it should be. He had no place there—had known it the moment Dorothea brought him in, the moment it was no longer imposing upon an adult, a distant stranger, but upon the people he wished he were strong enough, good enough to protect. 

He had not protected Bernadetta at the monastery when he tried to drag her from her room amid such tormented screams. 

_“No,”_ Bernadetta hissed, and she pulled away from Dorothea’s calming whispers to scramble onto shaky feet. “It’s not—you don’t get to tell me why I’m crying!”

Ferdinand nodded in graceful resignation. “I take no offense, Bernadetta. I will—”

“You either! I’m—of _course_ I’m afraid of you!”

She stomped her foot hard enough for the table to rattle, porcelain cups clinking in their saucers.

“I’m afraid of everyone! And I was afraid I’d never see you again, we didn’t know where you were, and I was afraid you didn’t… Didn’t have enough t-tea. You’re my friend. _That’s_ what I’m afraid of. And now you’re here and I’m _happy,_ Ferdinand, but you can’t even tell! You think I _hate_ you.” Her voice cracked.

“Bernadetta…”

She took a deep breath and clenched her eyes shut so tightly that all the tears spilled free. “You don’t get to sit there and think I hate you! Because I know what that feels like, and I can’t bear it, and… I guess that’s the kind of friend I am, huh? Bernie wasn’t satisfied being miserable herself, she had to _share_ it.”

Ferdinand stood, and at once she recoiled three steps. He thrust forward a decorative pillow. “Bernadetta?”

“Y-yes?”

“Would you please throw this at me? I have been told such things are cathartic. Into my self-absorbed face, perhaps?”

Mutely, she accepted the pillow. She did not throw it.

“I did not realize I had worried you so,” he murmured in response to all the rest, unable to weave it into an intelligible whole. She considered him a friend. His sorrow hurt her deeply. That he should ever feel the world close in upon him, as it did upon her every day of her life, terrified her well beyond whatever fears his presence could inspire. And that he would protect her with his life, as he had always known. 

Bernadetta wiped at her eyes. “I want you here, where I know you’re safe, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And. And I’ll throw this at you sometime when you’re _annoying,_ not just…sad.”

He swept up a napkin to dab at his own eyes, steeling his tremulous voice. “Bernadetta, I shall be the best housemate you will ever have in your life, I swear it to you. And should I falter, I readily invite such assaults from any and all upholstery! If there exists anything in my power to make this more manageable, any tasks I can perform—”

“A bell,” Dorothea said, as though her voice does not chime as one.

Ferdinand went very still. His pulse did not.

“Think about it! You were the one saying how living with so many ladies was _desperately_ inappropriate. So we’ll give you a nice little collar with a shiny golden bell. That way we’ll always know where our tomcat is.”

Leave it to Dorothea to dredge up the final deserter of his devastated dignity and crush it, screaming, under her heel. He swallowed. Reached reflexively for the tea, caught himself, dropped his hand. A bell. Well, better than the lapdog’s leash! At least he would have his independence!

Alas, how wrong he was to refuse kinship with the monastery strays after all…

A feathered projectile thumped him lightly on the shoulder. The pillow tumbled to the ground with the force of an avalanche, sudden and devastating, sweeping the room’s levity as Bernadetta stared at her own hands in ashen horror. “Oh no, no no no, now you’ve done it, Bernie. This is the end…”

Petra burst into triumphant applause. “Yes! You are aiming true!”

It took all of Ferdinand’s self-control not to toss back his head and laugh, or worse, sweep her into a grateful hug. Relief shivered through his limbs in a rush of champagne. Yes, if she felt brave enough to give him a good warning, then this could work just fine. He knelt to pluck the pillow from the floor, smile aching on his cheeks, and held it out to her with both hands. “Your weapon, milady.”

Bernadetta snatched it back if only to bury her face into it with a groan. 

“Looks like Bern’s voice saved you, kitten.” Dorothea cast Ferdinand a look that held not a glimmer of apology, but some manner of olive branch flourished in their emerald depths just the same. 

It struck him, softer than the pillow, that Dorothea had always bestowed one of those very personal Looks upon him. He would turn to her in flustered awe, try to temper it into something less friendly, less damning, _I know you hate me,_ and she smiled back with cold eyes, _It’s so much easier that way._ Dorothea’s barbs were no more than thorns upon a rose; better to prick his fingers on that protection than ever try to defang her. And perhaps living in such close quarters would allow him further insight on her hatred for him! A bee was not so annoying when it brought pollen home to its hive, and he would lavish these ladies with all the attention he could spare.

All Ferdinand needed was a show of good faith, an offer that would win him that next chance to win her over. “May I propose a list of articles? A contract of sorts, outlining my required contributions to the household.”

“A treaty,” Petra agreed with a grin, thinking perhaps of the agreements they had made as children languishing in the palace all winter—_you will help me practice the waltz, and I will pay you one cream puff for each time I tread on your toes. Here, I shall my affix my signature to the agreement._ “Ferdinand Shall Not.”

“Under threat of pillow fight,” Dorothea added.

“Yes! The foundations of a lasting friendship between houses Varley, Aegir, Arnault, and Macneary. Please, allow me to fetch a piece of scratch paper!” Ferdinand swept out of the room in haste. Friends! They had not only offered him a place to stay for however long he needed it, but had reinforced it with laughter and cheer—yes, herd jester was not such a bad job after all, and he could always work his way higher in the hierarchy once they witnessed his diligence and aptitude at household affairs.

He ducked into the nearest office, and before he was four steps inside, the door clicked shut behind him. Ferdinand turned to find Dorothea lounging against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, frown uncommonly soft and pensive. 

“Care for a little chat?”

“Of course! Was there something uncouth about our arrangement? Perhaps I was too forward. I would never try to entrap—”

She stepped forward and pushed a finger to his lips, pinching the skin against his teeth. “Stop. I’m not questioning that. You’ve never been the sort to wave your honor around like a shield.”

Ferdinand went very still. Had she faked her assent to the plan? And now they would devise a hasty excuse to remove him… He still walked into the same trap every single time.

“You’ve never been the sort to shut up, either,” she continued, looking as troubled as she had ever allowed him to see. “Is this the new you?”

Bare hands, bruised shins, unkempt and worthless and—

“Cowed like a little boy lost in the market crowd.”

One step, careful, backing away from her silencing hand. Shoulders stiff and unbowed. “I am not cowed by anything. I am distinctly aware of my situation and doing my best to minimize its impact on those around me.”

“Sweetheart. You couldn’t minimize yourself if you tried.” Dorothea swept a hand into the air and assumed the poise of an opera announcer. “The Great Ferdinand von Aegir, Most Noble of Nobles wherever he goes, however he falls… Or are you going to tell me all that breeding doesn’t mean a thing? To be honest, I hate the new you more than the old one.”

“You are under no obligation to sign my friendship declaration.” His words absolutely did not wobble, because he was not a babe in the nursery, and if they did—which they did not!—it was only due to tripping over the horrific childishness of _sign my friendship declaration._ Good Goddess. He clearly needed a few more nights’ rest to set his head back to rights.

“There it is again! Backing down instead of standing your ground.”

His ground. Aegir, razed to ash and mud and terror, clogging his throat as they dragged him half-dead through the fields. A fitting last glimpse for a traitor.

Her hands, firm and grounding on his shoulders, true worry in her frown this time. _“Ferdie._ What happened to you?”

All he could manage was a shake of his head. Dizziness, again. Definitely the dehydration. Petra worked him too hard in the morning, and now there was so much to manage, so many pieces to discuss and affirm.

“The thing is,” Dorothea said slowly, as if she already regretted the words. “In the opera, you play a lot of roles. Soon enough you’re seeing them everywhere. I can tell when someone slips into a new role behind the curtain, or when they’re so committed to their part that they never break character. That’s you, Ferdie. You played that infuriatingly naive noble who had to shove his prowess into everyone’s face so well you could win an award for it.”

Yes, that was what he had finally surpassed Edelgard at: vanity and facetiousness. High marks. Award-winning.

“And now you can’t decide if you’re a riches to rags parable, or a waterlogged orphan with big sad eyes, or—”

“I see your point.”

“I don’t think you do. Nothing you’re trying fits. You can’t just wander around without a costume change and pick at your seams until you fall apart. If the old role’s been recast, find another. Find it fast. The stage waits for no one. We’re only here playing house for a few weeks before we go murder a bunch of perfectly nice people fighting under the wrong banner. Get it?”

Ferdinand’s left hand shifted to his right sleeve, idly brushing at the already frayed seam of the cuff he had split that morning, and Dorothea’s eyes tracked the movement in sudden horror. Poor craftsmanship all around, really. To use such a metaphor on a man literally standing there in ill-fitting hand-me-downs because he owned nothing at all, not even a single spare shirt. 

“My apologies for such a poor showing,” Ferdinand snipped at last. He had spent his life playing the Good Duke, the aspiring Prime Minister, and now he could not even pass for pedestrian, for his own unadorned self. 

Playing General Aegir seemed more and more a phantom future.

Dorothea said nothing as he selected the parchment, inkwell, and pen to suit his needs, and she followed him in brooding silence as they returned to the parlor. A spot of gloomy weather looming on the horizon after a torrent had already swept through. 

At the table, Ferdinand and Petra fussed over the paper together, arguing on margins and spacing as they sketched out the borders. The lettering of the introductory clause took shape under Petra’s firm, even hand, with Ferdinand offering only the occasional suggestion, most of which she ignored. They skipped the body of the document for the time being as Petra recorded their names with ample room for each signature.

“Are Caspar and Linhardt signing this?” she asked, dipping the quill into the inkwell for a new line of text. Room for another four signatures remained.

“Yes! Excellent idea. Of course, it will only apply to our own persons, not our ascendants.” Nobody would ever ask Petra to sign something next to Caspar’s father, after all.

The girls shared a look as Ferdinand bent over to inspect the document.

Bernadetta summoned her courage first, perhaps emboldened by her successful assault earlier that afternoon. “And…Edelgard and Hubert?”

“Are they being your friends?” Petra pressed more firmly when no answer came.

Ah. Yes. Ferdinand had waltzed right into that trap, neat and tidy. “I am certain they would find such trivialities beneath them.” 

_I will compose a pamphlet comparing our accomplishments,_ he’d boasted to Edelgard once, caught in an escalating swell of adrenaline. Anything on paper could be shared, copied, preserved. Gone in a single spark, but somehow more tangible than a rotting armory of corruption. Permanence in the face of faceless transience. Just another childish wish.

“In fact, they are beneath us all. As Dorothea has so recently reminded me, we are at war. This is hardly the time for,” he swept a hand over the table, the tea and parchment and homey belonging of it all. “Such nonsense. I thank you for indulging me, but certainly we can now—”

Petra grabbed his wrist, and there was no glimmer of childhood games there now, no friendly distractions, only the steady resolution of a queen. “Ferdinand. You are not being wrong. We _are_ indulging you, because you hate to be showing sadness to others.”

“Oh.”

“Our Ferdinand gives joy when he is hurting. But too much is weighing on your shoulders. It would bring us all that joy if you are finally telling us your weight.”

He would, truly, if he had any words left at all. There was no way of dredging them out of the brambled swamp of his chest without sinking even deeper. It would require divine levity, or an impossible length of rope, or—

“Bern? Could you get a new pot of tea started for us?”

“Yes!”

The perfect cup of tea to stare into and swirl when he could meet no one’s eyes. 

That would do.

  


* * *

  


“You’re a real piece of work, Hubie.”

“Dorothea,” he grunted in greeting, not looking up from his work. The fortifications for the Myrddin Bridge would not draft themselves. 

Her heels clicked across the stone floor. “I’m sure your spies have already reported that I’ve got Ferdie holed up back at mine.”

“Yes. How dispiriting to discover you have a soft spot for plague-bearing strays.”

She smacked her hand onto the diagram, ink bleeding into the lines of her palm, and waited for his glower to rise to her face. “First, you owe me.”

Hubert didn’t even blink. Perhaps that was what happened when your emotions shriveled up, go too long without crying and your eyes dried right up and sank into your ghastly face. But he of all people would understand what a trial it would be to share the same roof with Ferdinand von Agony.

“Second, you owe Edie. We just had the most _delightful_ dinner where I told her all about Ferdie’s particularly grueling adventures! She didn’t have a _clue._ You always do give her the best surprises.” 

There were two things Edelgard refused to say as Emperor: _I didn’t know,_ and, _That wasn’t my order._ She didn’t say them to Dorothea at dinner, staring distantly into the blood red nectar of her wine glass, but Dorothea heard them anyway in that pinched, relieved frown. She’d certainly never say them to Ferdinand. They weren’t worth anything. The burden of command made them meaningless, and for all his bloody home decorating projects, Hubert had sure taken a gleeful hammer to this particular chore. 

“That Ferdinand’s irrelevant feelings are any grounds for argument proves my aim entirely. He is a distraction.”

“He is a _general,”_ Dorothea snapped, crumpling the paper in substitution for his smarmy face. “A military asset. Have you ever considered what that looks like to your other assets? Or are you planning to run this campaign through intimidation tactics? I bet you’d like that. Promise you’ll let me watch Edie’s face when you try to spin that one.”

“If he is a general,” Hubert drawled, tone rich and dark and utterly in control, “Then where is he? Duty calls.”

“Third. I have a question for you.”

She let it hang there, infuriatingly, until Hubert at last grunted and motioned for her to spit it out.

“Are you being paid for your service to the Empire, or are you using Daddy’s money?”

Hubert’s face donned a particularly stunning shade of puce, miasma working its way under his skin. It suited him so well he ought to wear it for his formal portraiture.

“Because I don’t have a rich noble lineage, so you’re actually _paying_ me, remember? I’ve drawn three months’ worth so far. Did you pay Ferdie yet? No? Well, let’s fix that little administrative error. You’re going to put his name on the wage roll and hand over his back pay, and you’re going to do it now.”

  


* * *

  


FERDINAND WILL NOT:

\- Knock more than thrice at any closed door at any one time.  
\- Knock on Bernadetta’s door more than two separate instances each day.  
\- Enter the kitchen without permission if currently occupied.  
\- Criticize anyone’s life choices.  
\- Use any washroom outside the staff quarters.  
\- Sing any opera song. Anywhere. Ever.  
\- Complain.  
\- Leave pieces of armor in any room outside his own.  
\- Cook.  
\- Buzz, buzz, buzz.

_Arnault, Macneary, Varley, & Aegir_  
_Garland Moon 2, 1181_

  


* * *

  


The very first rule of being a newly impoverished ex-nobleman: frugality. 

Surprising no one, Ferdinand skipped that lesson owing to his natural excellence at balancing his accounts. He and Petra arrived home in a boastful whirl of exuberance over their purchases: a new pair of riding boots (one could not accept the army’s supplies on such a crucial point of equipment), a small but functional array of shirts and trousers for everyday use (built to last—he had paid well for the craftsmanship), and an atrocious amount of (second-rate) tea. Petra had even been so kind as to gift him a new boot knife! He would need to polish it posthaste, it had obviously been handled too long without anyone bothering to wipe the harmful residues from its finely sharpened blade. 

The moment the pair scurried away, Dorothea’s eyes met Bernadetta’s. 

“Do you think he, um…”

“Went to his usual boutique tailor and ordered the cheapest things in the fancy dandy catalog? Absolutely. I’m sure he thinks himself very clever.”

Three months’ wages, and Ferdinand returned with three shirts. Three. 

“Well, yes, that, but, uhhhhh.” Bernadetta blushed lightly, leaning in to whisper even though they were perfectly alone. “Do you think he remembered to buy smallclothes?”

Dorothea smiled with saccharine fury. “I’m going to kill him.”

Housing experiment over. Done. Dorothea would do a lot for the Empire—well, for Edie—but how could she possibly be expected to deal with this atrocity of a show pony without additional hazard pay? 

“He didn’t get anything for Court either…” Bernadetta fiddled with a frayed patch of the couch’s upholstery, tucking loose threads back into the whole with her nimble, meticulous fingers. “I thought maybe I could…make something? It’s probably a stupid idea, right?” Her shoulders fell. “Of course it’s stupid, Bernie, he’s always had a real tailor so he wouldn’t want _crafts_…”

If Ferdinand had clothes he could wear in public, loudly and proudly, then he would gallivant around where people could see him, not hole himself up in Dorothea’s vicinity like a plucked peacock. He would go to Court. He would waltz through those doors and shout and argue and make himself Hubert’s problem again, and she might just live to twenty after all. 

“You’re a genius, Bern! That would cheer him up like nothing else. Something designed just for him? No one else will have anything like it — he’ll be _unique.”_

“As befits his unparalleled noble soul,” Bernadetta finished in a hopeful mumble. “Really? You really think so?”

“Absolutely!”

“It wouldn’t look sloppy?”

“If you made a mistake—and I’m sure you wouldn’t, you’re such a clever seamstress—it would only make him proud to have a garment of such character.” Dorothea flipped her hair with all the graceful self-assurance of Ferdinand on his first day at the academy, and Bernadetta smiled behind her hands.

There were other advantages, too, Dorothea realized with dawning enthusiasm. She reached out to brush a messy curl back behind Bernadetta’s ear as the girl detailed her ideas so far. They all needed new roles for the upcoming military production, and now and again, clothes really did make the girl. If Bernadetta outfitted them all, maybe momentum would carry her to do the same for herself.

“I have some pin money left over for the fabric. As long as that part’s really good quality, m-maybe I could pull it off. But…I don’t have any patterns for, um. Ferdinand-shaped people.”

Wherever would they find a whole crop of broad-shouldered, trim-waisted, naturally dapper and chronically obnoxious young men?

Dorothea grinned. “You just leave that part to me.”

  


* * *

  


The dawn slipped into Ferdinand’s room like a siren song, _if the sun rises then so must you,_ dim embers of momentum flashing back to life. He had risen before the sun for almost his entire life, that promise of a morning ride tempting him from his bed without fail, be it an escape from the stifling atmosphere of home or the chance to exercise Dorte and his fellows before Marianne came to fuss over their breakfast. Only a true monsoon had ever prevented him from those treasured excursions.

That certainty still dragged him to consciousness, eyes cracking open to the dark of dwindling night with nowhere to go and nowhere to be. Ferdinand could drift there for a few minutes while sleep curtained his waking thoughts, but the pitiless sun never dimmed her demands. He reached for the book on his bedside table, an abridged history of Albinean trade policies in the western sea, even though there would not be enough light to read by for another few minutes yet.

His fingers brushed over chill metal instead, lingering. The emblem of Aegir.

He should toss it into the sea and have done with it, return his name where it came from, but true to form Ferdinand could not simply carve the riotous longing from his breast. The insignia of his house warmed eagerly in his hands, tarnished gold glinting as he raised it to the light.

If Ferdinand could thank his father for anything, it was for being too busy to change the Aegir heraldry yet again. An embarrassment of revisions plagued most noble houses of the Empire, who constantly refit their emblems to remain in vogue, and the Aegirs were certainly no exception. When Prime Minister Derick’s marriage into the imperial line propelled his own house from mediocrity to glory, all the symbols of their distant seafaring past were hastily reworked, gone the seawalls and barques and circling terns. The hippocampi lingered as a framing device for a few hundred years, faded entirely, then gained new traction once the crest of Cichol blessed the family. Ferdinand had no lack of love for the modern motifs, the tide lapping at a field of golden grain in the background of all those swords and shields and rearing beasts, yet the one in his hand had always been his favorite, a simple sun cresting over impenetrable waves, the symbol of Derick’s commitment to his imperial bride.

Was it coincidence that the Flame Emperor left this, only this, burning in his palm?

The House of Aegir could not succumb as long as Ferdinand still drew breath with the proof of his legitimacy in hand. The mansion, the lands, the automatic political position, all of these were only trappings turned traps, debris cluttering his way forward. With it all wiped away, he could—

Why settle for optimism when he could veer straight into delusion?

Ferdinand rolled onto his back and threw an arm over his eyes, blotting out the light, trying to smother his thoughts if not himself. Nausea churned in his stomach as it did so often now, as if it were not distress at all, but something darker, the sort of passions that would drive an opera plot, swell forth with the orchestra, and result in a massacre by curtain fall. He did not want it, whatever it was, and he certainly would not honor it with a name.

But in the darkness, Ferdinand thought of Dorothea’s face twisted into the vicious cheer she reserved for bad dates, but had bestowed upon him when he told everyone his miserable tale. _Ferdie, you’re allowed to be angry._

Laughable, that bit. The rest was worse.

_They’re your friends. You don’t treat friends like that._

And Ferdinand, unable to argue either point, had said the most damning words of his life. _It is merely politics._

That was the easy answer, the one that swept away all the unsavory details under that tidy veneer of inevitability. It had occurred to him, unbidden and unwanted, that for every easy answer there must be a hard one. Was it diplomacy or cowardice to avoid it? _Hubert has never been my friend,_ he did not say. _I don’t know who Edelgard is anymore._ And his voice did not shake, because he said nothing more than trite nonsense, and no one believed him anyway.

Ferdinand had not trained and studied and devoted all his life to an esteemed future leading his nation just to spit useless, two-faced words. 

If hard answers lurked behind all the easy ones, then what did Lorenz find so beneath him to tell? And what would Edelgard have told him if he only bothered to ask, if he pressed her on it like every other conversation of their lives, instead of turning tail and bolting from the cathedral.

_The matter of Aegir must be resolved._

Yes. In conversation, in partnership. Ferdinand begged her time and again for a duel — was this not the challenge he desired? Tear down the nobility and the bad blood would be insurmountable, lest someone of that caste prove the worthlessness of such things as title and inheritance. Who better to wash clean the idea of nobility until it could shine again, just and true? Clearly this was no challenge for weaselly Hubert, who plucked the marquisate from his father’s still-warm corpse and showed no sign of handing it over, regardless of the clear inconsistency in their state policy. 

Was there any chance she had been relying on Ferdinand all along? Wishful thinking, yet such was his usual and may have factored into her plans, always a step ahead and waiting for him to catch up. Had there been clues? Was Hubert _mad_ about the clues? Baring his vengeful maws simply because he had not been selected for such an honorable destiny?

It was all a very nice fantasy world to muck about in before breakfast, and Ferdinand surely could not be blamed for idling there a little longer.

Which was exactly why he plodded down the stairs not ten minutes later, collar buttoned, hair combed, sloth vanquished. No son of Aegir would be caught languishing in self-pity with the whole world waiting outside his door! Today he would challenge the coffee press to a rematch and finally make it weep its bitter, murky tears of defeat. The dishes, too, had earned his sudsy ire after their behavior the day before. There must be some technique for efficiency without breakage, and he was sure to develop it with further experience. 

“Of course, I don’t see the point of it at all. Hang the bastards and have done.”

Ferdinand froze outside the kitchen. The smell of freshly brewed coffee already wafted out into the hallway alongside Countess Varley’s forthright declaration. If the kitchen was already occupied, he had agreed not to impose upon the ladylike gossip rituals held there. 

“Fine by me,” Dorothea hummed, and Ferdinand crept closer to the honey-sweet whisper of her voice.

“If the Emperor wants a show, nothing is stopping her from public trials and executions. Bring back the arena of old and spill some blood if we must. But to punish the child for the sins of the father…” The Countess loosed a withering sigh. “He’s just a boy.”

No.

He was not.

Ferdinand may have wallowed, may have let his fortunes momentarily affect him—as it would surely affect any man!—but he had faced the situation with integrity, with his feet planted firm to bear the burden. To have that reduced to the cliche of a sobbing child abandoned in his father’s shadow, powerless against a terrifying and baffling world, his fate wrenched from his own hands? Unacceptable. He had earned recognition, not pity. The Countess should be standing there lauding the treasures he had snatched from the jaws of defeat: his officer’s education, his battlefield expertise, his matchless equestrian abilities, all those inalienable facets of his worth. 

She would walk out into society, into the garden parties and soirees and opera premieres, and tell everyone that Ferdinand von Aegir was just a little boy, tossed about and swept aside by the Emperor’s stormy seas. _Tragic,_ they would titter behind their fans. _He once showed such promise._

“He’s old enough to swim,” Dorothea argued, if it could be called that, her tone so utterly disinterested as she picked at her morning toast. “Either he will or he won’t.”

Perfect ambivalence, a determination so devoid of any sentiment that it washed the rest away. No condolences slipping down his spine like sweat, no giggling specters in his ears, no insults or insignias or intrigue. Only a challenge.

Ferdinand tapped his fingers to his lips, locking his shocked laugh behind a watery smile. Leave it to the opera diva to speak just the words her audience needed to hear.

_No more treading water. Time to dare the waves._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is now three chapters because I continue to be rubbish at judging length/pacing upon first posting! But only one chapter remaining, I promise.
> 
> Shoutout to [twitter](https://twitter.com/aureafila/status/1196828011712143362) for helping me brainstorm the Aegir heraldry! I used one of [Dori's sketches](https://twitter.com/doridraws/status/1196843014955655169) for the ancient emblem that Ferdie's carrying around. 
> 
> (Additional disclaimer: I would like to emphasize that Ferdinand remains a terribly unreliable narration, _especially_ when it comes to the girls. There are massive gaps in his knowledge, and Petra has definitely suffered in ways he has NO grasp of as he's drawing his comparisons!!)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last, Ferdinand emerges from his cocoon...
> 
> Shoutout to anyone who began reading this last year & is still around for this conclusion. You're the real MVP. 
> 
> Illustrated by two of my fave artists, [Birds](https://twitter.com/hausofthestars/) & [Kyuhu!](https://twitter.com/kyuhuuu)
> 
> Chapter-specific warnings: mentions of animal harm, alcohol, canon-typical child harm.
> 
> I hate that I have to say this, but please note that this is a story, not an Argument or even a personal Viewpoint. This is not inviting discourse. A fill-in-the-gaps-of-canon fanfic is not the place.

  


* * *

  


Ferdinand woke from nightmares. _Again,_ he thought with calm clarity. His sheets were a murk of sweat, specters of shattered dreams nipping at his heels as he dragged himself from the bed. If this were to be his new normal, then he had best get used to it. A soldier’s march could be the trek from bed to dresser, his armor the shirt thrown on and hair hastily combed in the mirror. 

Last night it had been a stable full of demonic beasts. They slobbered happily as he fed them their carrots, their sulfur breath washing over him like his grandfather’s cologne. Ferdinand sniffed himself to be sure.

He paused before the mirror, hand resting gently over his sternum for his usual prayers, but none of the words would come. Not for the Goddess, not for the people of Adrestia. Those were the words his father and mother had taught him, and if the Goddess had ever once turned Her ear their way, surely She had long since given up in disgust at such vapid displays of piety.

Ferdinand closed his eyes, breathed in, and mouthed words of his own: _May I seek no shadows of Comfort. May I reach ever toward the ugliness of Truth. May I break my back beneath the Work._

And down he went to sit on the front step of the townhouse. He finished a chapter of political theory in his borrowed book before the delivery maid arrived with the morning’s bread, and he carried it inside to slice and serve for Lady Varley’s assistant, Hendrik. The man did little more than blink at Ferdinand and accept the plate of toast and cured ham, though he agreed easily enough when Ferdinand begged a lesson on the proper preparation of Lady Varley’s coffee beans, then on the most efficient technique for lathering the dishes in soap without letting any slip away, and then yet another on boiling eggs without exploding them within the shells.

By the time the girls discovered the tray of egg salad sandwiches and freshly brewed caffeinated encouragements waiting in the kitchen, Ferdinand had long since retreated to his room with his new prize.

Hendrik had given him another dozen pages of fine paper that was only occasionally marred by Lady Varley’s spilled formulas and the faded rings of saucer-less teacups. They could not be used for official purposes, let alone be bound into future volumes without infecting the whole with mold, but Ferdinand had no need of permanence or prestige for these particular pages. Hendrik had assured him the Lady had more pieces of scratch paper than she would ever be able to ramble upon even if locked inside for a hundred years.

Ferdinand himself planned to continue hacking away at his Work for the next hundred years, if that was what it took. He approached the project much the same way he had at thirteen, when he spent a summer marooned in Aegir without even a tutor and decided to pen a manuscript on the history of weaponry in Aegir. The organization system that he had once refined into a veritable art served him magnificently now. The trick was to outline one’s path of inquiry much like a farmer marking the bounds of a field before the plowing began. That way one would not stray to questions best left for a second volume down the road. So Ferdinand began each page with its sole allotted question, beneath which he recorded all of his observations and referenced other pages containing any resulting questions. 

Yesterday he wrote down ten of them, and another ten the day before, and sitting now at week’s end he had what must have been a hundred pages of cramped lines of ink. 

**B-5. What drives the punishments/placements under Edelgard’s new regime?**  
**Marquis Vestra: Dead**  
**Duke Aegir, Count Varley: House arrest/Custody/Dispossessed**  
**Count Bergliez, Lord Arundel: Collaborators  
**Count Hevring: Complicit?**  
**—> Is punishment retaliation for lack of support? Is punishment tailored to known crime, but allayed for current supporters? (Viability of justice under current legal system? See J-8.)**  
**—> Chessboard theory: Ends > Means. Setting up optimal pieces for war. Hubert takes Vestra, Bernadetta takes Varley. Linhardt & Caspar not viable for inheritance/leadership, fathers critical as supporters. Aegir goal = ??? Removed from board or elevated to piece?****

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These pages would damn him, Ferdinand knew. If Hubert arrived at the door to sniff for Sedition, Ferdinand may very well be dragged to a dreary prison cell by sundown. It was simply a risk he had to live with. His mind was muddled, adrift in the storm of his confusion, and the only way to cleave a path through such treacherous waters was to fish up each question one by one and trap them in these pages.

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**A-2: How much of the manifesto reflects Edelgard’s real ideals and how much is flagrant propaganda? (—> Is war without propaganda viable expectation in practice? See M-1.)**

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**N-1: Dissolution of Nobility: Is the rot truly so deep that righteousness cannot scour clean its aching bones? Philosophical. Disregard. See N-2 through N-10 for practical application of dissolution to regional stability and service.**

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**I-3: Does Edelgard have the support of the imperial family?**

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Some of the questions he wrote down and shuffled into the pile for later. He could not trust his own memory of historical politics for something this crucial, so the research would wait until he had a wider library on hand. 

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Other questions sat with him for a long, long time.

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**A-1: Why does Edelgard hate the Church?**

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He could not be sure she did, was the thing.

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It was the first question he had penned, and rather than driving out its leaden specter within his breast, it only invoked a further possession. Ferdinand grappled with its weight all throughout the day, as though learning to breathe with a collapsed lung, but breathing still. The Church was faith and devotion and the natural kinship of all peoples; it was also Rhea’s echoing roar, a call for absolute submission or heaven-mandated destruction, a mechanism of centralized control. 

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It was Marianne finding the only solace of her life and Mercedes finding succor from the evils of men. It was Lorenz tipping his head away, so regretful that so many nobles professed faith only for a veneer of dignity. It was Ferdinand singing in the choir from three to eighteen, thinking if he only raised his voice high enough, the Goddess would answer whatever ailed him. 

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He could not remember ever seeing Edelgard pray. Her brow furrowed when the teachers made her sing in the choir, yet it was not as if she twisted the words to farce and blasphemy when her quiet soprano rang out. Hubert was the one who snorted and scowled if anyone prayed over their meal in the mess hall, while Edelgard only frowned, eyes darting to Petra in miserable apology. 

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Edelgard did not need the Church in order to live. She did not think _anyone_ did. She would find her own solace, dignity, and answers—and if she could do it, then so could Ferdinand. 

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But there was no carving a Saint’s crest from one’s bones. For either of them.

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Ferdinand tapped the feather of his pen against his chin. This would be much easier if he had armor to occupy his hands, rather than his pen poised above the page for thoughts that skittered like rats in the storeroom. 

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He went to wash dishes and scrub laundry instead. A natural disposition towards self-sufficiency and atheism was certainly not a crime, Ferdinand told a particularly stubborn spot of burnt sauce upon the pan. The Empire itself had leaned in that direction ever since the crisis of the Southern Church in his great-grandfather’s day, and the cosmopolitan capital was famously impious compared to the outlying regions. None of that made someone stand up, declare war against the continent’s predominant religion, and unmask its Archbishop as something he preferred to remember only as a terrifying fever dream.

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**A-3: Is destruction of Church hegemony or unification of Fodlan the primary goal?**

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That one would certainly become the subject of many students’ book reports in centuries to come. Ferdinand allowed it a page and included some relevant factors, but made no attempts to draw any conclusions. Time would tell. A seat at the war table would tell even faster.

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Ferdinand never did finish his childhood manuscript. New duties and distractions pulled his attentions elsewhere, certainly, but the fundamental problem was that Aegir could not stand as a separate historical entity. It was too fully integrated in the history of the Empire itself.

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So, too, was Edelgard too integrated—not within his own life, where she shone blindingly bright, but within imperial politics. She was only eighteen. To consider her master of all the Empire’s ongoings was asinine; her motives and methods would be influenced by those that surrounded her, by the circumstances that reared her.

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By which he did _not_ mean Hubert. That dastard was naught but a menacing distraction. Ferdinand allowed a section of HVV-1 through 19 for his foremost complaints, penned on the least salvageable pages, and happily burned one each night before bed. 

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Ferdinand would look only at Edelgard. Easy. He had done so all his life. Had she not always been a guiding light, intense and unwavering, whether it was in front of him just out of reach, or at his back as he marched off in the opposite direction? No light, now. However the war unfolded, Edelgard’s name would never ring glorious in the annals of history. She set fire to her own nobility first of all, torch to the pyre, and Ferdinand’s head rang with the knowledge of every atrocity her war would bring, his shoulders bowing under the sympathetic weight of wagering years of misery against an uncertain future many would never see. But he could not look away. He had to reach into the darkness and find the hidden strings, the same way he greased and rotated every joint in his armor, or now searched every inch of fabric for further stains to scrub.

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**A-4: Flame Emperor.**  
**A-5: Death Knight.**  
**A-6: Remire.**

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No notes or further queries were penned on those pages. Ferdinand’s mind filled with wool the moment he tried to reach for them, like opening a chest of winter clothes for the first chill and finding only moths and fuzz within. 

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Every time he attempted to dwell on any of those, Ferdinand looped back to the same question. 

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**Am I angry or afraid?**

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Petals on a daisy plucked one by one: Angry, Afraid, Angry, Afraid. Chop off his head and be done with Aegir. Chop off the heads of Edelgard’s enemies and be done with honor, with righteousness. Doubt, and be strung up for sedition. Serve, and bloody his hands with slaughter.

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Except. Edelgard said they could leave if they wanted to. Flayn did. Lorenz did not have the choice when his father sent him south as a political offering.

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Flayn had no choice either, when it was the Death Knight’s blade at her throat instead of Edelgard’s, and apparently that was the very same knife.

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Except, except, except. Around and around.

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He fought the urge to dunk his head in the washing water, would have done it if not for the suds. He was too stupid for politics, if politics it was. He had doubts.

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Funny how in all his years of training to be Prime Minister, of dreaming of glorious deeds and planning his speeches, never once had Ferdinand wondered what it would be like to serve an Emperor who refused to listen to his valuable advice, let alone a _bad_ Emperor. 

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How would he even know? In the histories, there were always early signs of inadequacy — madness, cruelty, unwise associations. Edelgard was only ever perfectly polite, if easily bored, and his earliest memories of her were of races through the imperial gardens. Was there some grand moral in the fact she had once slipped between the hedges in a shortcut too perilous for his four extra inches of height? That she had declined to dance with him or anyone at the great ball upon her return to Enbarr after so many years abroad? Ferdinand had always attributed it to the fierce individuality of a child from such a large family, compared to his own fierce individuality of a child with no siblings to reflect upon. 

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When Ionius proved a bad Emperor, Ferdinand’s father did what was necessary to bring him to heel. Edelgard gnawed through the leash and bit off Ferdinand’s hand well before the idea ever even occurred to him—

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Ferdinand paused, staring down at his hands in the bucket.

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Which…meant it had occurred to her?

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His heart twisted in his chest like a fish thrown on the dock. Edelgard was always five steps ahead. She must have evaluated him in the same way he now approached the board: _how does one identify a bad Prime Minister?_ A war took years of planning — how old was Ferdinand when Edelgard determined there was nothing of value to be found in him? Or worse.

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Duke Aegir took to the field for a half dozen fox hunts each year, and Ferdinand has never forgotten the first and only time he attended, when his father’s clumsy hand on the leash choked two of the eager hounds to wheezing tremors before the hunt even began. The man had laughed. _Stupid beasts,_ he said. _Tighten their collars until they learn to obey._

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Ferdinand’s hands shook. He dried them on a towel and emptied the basin, hung up all the laundry. He returned to his room.

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With each step up the stairs, he tried to picture Edelgard and could only see her back. Spine taut. Shoulders high. In armor, in dresses, in the precise lines of her academy uniform. The kind of quiet certainty that anyone could follow. The others certainly did, and to picture someone like Petra or Caspar bowing to an evil tyrant without their wrists and ankles in chains was laughable. Let alone Dorothea, who so loathed the powerful, but leaned her chin upon Edelgard’s shoulder whenever they stood together, who called her evil minion _Hubie_ and still had not lost her tongue for it. 

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_I will run ahead and clear the way,_ Ferdinand declared at five, then ran the other way when the rose bushes pricked his cheeks. _I will invite her to dance,_ Ferdinand thought at the ball, then lost his nerve. _I will prove my worth,_ Ferdinand swore at the mock battle, then broke formation and nearly his neck along with it. 

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When Ferdinand finally woke in the infirmary after the fight, Edelgard had been sitting next to him. Relief settled into her like a moth settling its wings, and as he braced for the rightful dressing down from the commander he had ignored, Edelgard only said, _welcome back._ She did not smile; she rarely did. But she looked at him with as much warmth as she was capable of, and…for the first time, Ferdinand wondered why she was not capable of more. Why she tried so artlessly anyway. He had never asked. 

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Maybe Edelgard never did see him at all, not because he was worthless in her view, but because she saw something else. The reason driving all of this—the one she could not express, could not entrust, and inflicted upon the world through fire and sword rather than stand silent. Ferdinand could not imagine a reason worth all of this, but the burr in his heart would not be dislodged. 

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**Is Edelgard angry or afraid?**

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He picked at it all through the afternoon, shifting the barbs this way and that as if the pain would form a key. None of his memories fit the lock. Edelgard kept secrets; Ferdinand lacked knowledge. It undermined the very heart of their destiny: how could an Emperor acquire guidance without confidants, how could a Prime Minister advise without wisdom? 

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_That_ answer was simple. He could not. His future was already dead, why bother with all of this? His stack of papers grew by the day, even though he carefully weeded out any too overtly self-serving or lacking in wider application (Why do they hate me? What value can I bring? How could Jeritza stab my Princess?), and after everything he had been through, Ferdinand refused to be smothered to death by a cult of secrecy. He would die in the light.

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Goddess, if they all must fall this young, he wanted them all to die in the light! 

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As if he could wrestle Edelgard from her course with as little care as he had Bernadetta from her room. Part of Ferdinand’s heart kept laughing, dark with disgust, that none of this had any point at all. _No matter pride, it is outright cowardice not to walk away from someone who mistreats you._ It did not sound like his father’s voice anymore. It sounded like his own. 

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And that carried it all back to sedition, and fear, and on and on. Logic said to leave. Absolutely nothing said to stay, except that bloody sludge in his chest, offering him no guidance beyond its ache of agony. 

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Ferdinand dropped his head to the table, his paperwork now tall enough to amply pillow his head as the ink bled against his cheek. Walking away meant never getting any answers. He would burn the pages and every single question would sink into his skin instead; he would die with them in his head. At twenty or eighty, he would still wonder. He would still have this hollow where no key would fit.

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Because _he_ didn’t fit. It was so easy to fixate on Edelgard’s five perfect steps ahead of him, rather than the way Ferdinand never stepped quite right wherever he stepped. Not quiet enough for his mother, not quick enough for his father. He spent his childhood in Enbarr desperately chasing after the older imperial princes to join their boastful circle of rowdy virtue, pushing to the front of the line to leave roses at the opera without ever being spared a moment of attention, and tripping all over Constance’s feet at their dance lessons and over his own words in the lecture hall. Even at the monastery, he kept walking into the invisible walls of everyone’s mystifyingly low esteem.

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It was not about him. 

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Truly! If Ferdinand could tear the thoughts out of his brain like he shredded the offending pages before the fire, he would! 

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He did not want this rotten, conceited Aegir blood in his veins if this was all it got him, choking on silly memories instead of tactically evaluating a war on his doorstep. Yet every time he raised his knife to one of the knots trapping him here, he felt like a scoundrel cutting himself free of a shipwreck while all his fellows drowned. 

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Folding one of the discarded pages in half, Ferdinand began to sketch a sinking ship. He could fold it into the shape of a boat and burn it tonight instead of his usual curses, and maybe then he would finally be free. Hubert stood at the helm, driving them right into the rocks with a cruel little smirk on his face. Petra stood up in the crow’s nest and Caspar had tangled himself in the sails and netting. He drew Linhardt and Bernadetta down in the hull, sleeping soundly in their separate rooms, and gave Bernadetta a few books and a stuffed bear for good measure. Dorothea had to be the siren singing on the prow, the squiggles of her hair flying in the wind. Ferdinand walked the plank, of course, and Edelgard…

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She didn’t know how to swim. She could not be the beast in the water, silent and silver, the tendrils of her hair curling around the hull to drag them down below. The ink spilled as Ferdinand’s pen carved into the paper, the image trapped in him—he had never seen her swim, never seen her hair fan out in the pond, but the memory danced around his grasping fingers, fragile fronds braiding to a strength he could catch and haul above the surface.

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Autumn. Leaves bloody and gold as they fell. Edelgard, lying beneath a tree in the gardens, her hands clasped over her stomach like a corpse. Her dress black, her gloves black, every inch of her veiled in black silks made ever more striking by the stark white drape of her hair like a veil over the earth. 

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It was the first time Ferdinand had returned to Enbarr in two years, and he had been shocked to discover Edelgard had similarly returned from her travels abroad. She looked new. He _felt_ new. He went to greet her, to compliment her dress and see if she too had enjoyed a recent growth spurt, and then Hubert peeled off from the tree’s shadow and gave him a look so sharp it felt like being hurled through a wall. And that was that.

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What _was_ that? 

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There had been a page about Hubert’s loathing, committed to the fire many days previous. There had been pages of moments in Ferdinand’s life that confused and appalled him, and all of them were tossed away due to their unbearable crimes of narcissism. 

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He took the wrong approach. The questions on these pages would be answered by history. The real clues were in what he lived that contradicted what he had been told. 

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Ferdinand shuffled through his pages yet again, this time dividing them based on his observations, not his topics. Edelgard’s solitude, her clarity, her _hair._ That the years in Faerghus kindled no fond feeling, and what was Faerghus if not the bedrock of the Church? Destroy the nobility that determined her fate! Destroy the hand that held the leash—no, destroy _every_ hand that could leash another. 

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Something must have happened while Edelgard was away. Something terrible. Hubert and her siblings had not been there to support her, so naturally she became distrustful and withdrawn, unable to reach out to those of similar dissatisfaction with the status quo. If only Ferdinand had taken her hand and made his intentions clear, they could have walked together! And if he caught up those five steps of distance, maybe it was still possible to choose another path. At the very least, he’d have the knowledge to properly understand why _not._

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Edelgard would never disclose her suffering to him, of course. But Ferdinand had something better. The memories of children were fallible; the intricate recollections of adults were not. 

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A light still burned within Lady Varley’s office. All Ferdinand had to do was knock.

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“How about this one?”

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Under the wary eye of the shopkeeper, Dorothea unrolled a half yard of cerulean blue brocade and draped it across her shoulders. It shimmered in the sun like an oasis on a summer day, and if one squinted just enough and imagined the whole as an abstract watercolor, the orange scarf tied over her dark locks could almost pass for the sands of Morfis. 

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“Mmmmmm.” Bernadetta frowned.

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“Too…?”

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“Too _Too.”_

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She sounded so serious that Dorothea couldn’t help but laugh as she folded up the bolt of cloth. They’d been at it since the market opened at nine, and it was already well into the afternoon. A brief break for lunch had not been nearly enough to recover their eyes from the garishness of so many silks and jacquards and velvets and wools, each dyed the particular shade of an exotic butterfly from the botanical gardens. 

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_Too_ Too meant precisely that: too much to look at, too much to look at on _Ferdinand._ It would be so much easier if he had given his Officer’s Academy uniform a bit of flair, the slightest personal touch beyond gilded noble claptrap, but no. He could make nothing simple for them. He had worn only black, sparing them the sight of his ruffled feathers at full ostentatious swagger, and now their eyes would burn out for lack of practice. 

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Dorothea sighed and pulled down the scarf from her hair. It could be worse, she reminded herself. They could be trying to match to Bergliez blue.

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“Do you want to try that white one?” She pointed to a patterned cotton, white with a wandering path of sandy brown vines that blossomed into red berries here and there. 

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“White won’t work at _all._ He’d look like a Saint or, or bleed on it…”

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“It’s Ferdinand. He’ll manage to bleed on it anyway.”

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Bernadetta’s gaze slid quickly away, though Dorothea would swear it was a roll of her eyes, not a mute acquiescence. She shuffled nervously around the shop and muttered to herself upon inspection of each bolt. An emerald silk with embroidered golden horses, which would surely make him look like a huntsman. A blood orange too gaudy for even Edelgard’s upcoming portraiture. A long line of warm, earthy cinnamons and russets and dark cocoas, none of which Ferdinand had the charisma to pull off. He would look like a stage prop, a piece of pasteboard painted to the semblance of an elegant wardrobe to set a properly wealthy scene. A fifth son of some backwater baron without a penny to his name. It was close enough. It was what he deserved.

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But Bernadetta didn’t deserve to wear through her bottom lip with her teeth, all jittery with indecision and worry. All through the day her nerves had tightened and tightened, and Dorothea could practically feel the vibrations that meant they were about to snap. Being out in public like this took a toll on the girl, even when happily distracted by her mission and hobbies. There was only so much Dorothea could do to shield her from it. 

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The scarf fluttered down over Bernadetta’s head like a butterfly net, and Dorothea drew her in with a mischievous smile. “If the cloth won’t speak,” she hummed, leaning down to speak right into Bernadetta’s ear. “Then we must find our inspiration elsewhere. Come along, Bern. I’ve got a new idea.”

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They walked a few blocks east to a plaza with fewer pedestrians and more clattering wheels. One of the main gates of Enbarr’s wealthiest districts filtered out onto this road, so most of the fancy carts transporting goods and people around the city passed this way. Dorothea bought them a bag of small, doughy cakes stuffed with peach currant jam, and they climbed up onto the lip of a fountain to watch the horses pass.

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The nice thing about being out in public with Bernadetta was that no one could ever turn up their nose at Dorothea. They got one look at the luxury top-stitching on Bernadetta’s boots, or the rich violet dye of her well-worn dress, and they knew that was a little lady far above their pay grade. And if they met anyone too ignorant or arrogant to give a damn, then Dorothea just planted herself in between Bernadetta and whatever asshole looked their way, just like all the elder actresses at the opera had always done for her. Teamwork. 

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Bernadetta nibbled the jam out of one of her cakes, then turned the lumpy shell inside-out and rolled it up into a sticky ball that she could easily pick apart into little pieces for the pigeons. She stared mournfully down at them as they gathered on the cobblestone.

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“You okay?” Dorothea asked softly, bumping their shoulders together.

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“…Ferdinand’s going to leave.”

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“Maybe.”

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She dropped a whole big lump of cake and watched as the fattest, luckiest pigeon of all snatched it up. “He’s always writing. Remember when he told Edelgard he’d make a handbill against her?”

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“And now she’s made a manifesto. So if he wants to outdo her…”

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“Hendrik says there’s burnt paper in the fire every single night. What if Ferdinand finally finds the right words and, and…” Bernadetta tipped back her head, as if trying to dry her tears in the light instead of the shadows for once. “I can’t even find the right fabric, Bernie’s so _stupid._ Nothing I make will be good enough, and then he’ll _leave_ and we’ll have to fight him and I _can’t._ I can’t do it, Dorothea. I… I can’t point an arrow at him, but I’ll _have_ to, unless he stays, but I can’t make him because I can’t even…why won’t anything _match!”_

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Her voice dropped to a warble. “He thinks he doesn’t match. Because you’re all so strong, you know? You and Edelgard and Petra and…and I don’t match either. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t want to fight and I don’t want to die but I. I want to be in the future with you, too. And I want it to be a good one. I don’t know if that’s enough. I think it’s not supposed to be.”

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“Bernadetta…”

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“I don’t want to be in a happy future where Ferdinand’s dead with an arrow in his throat because I couldn’t, c-couldn’t—”

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Dorothea’s arms snaked around Bernadetta, snatching the rest of the words away as she pulled the other girl close to her heart. “We’re all making our own choices, okay, sweetheart? And none of them are your fault. Even if they hurt. Even if they mean we can’t all be in that future together.” Someday they’d all be dead anyway, so that future, at least, they’d share.

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Would she feel any guilt seeing Ferdie across the battlefield? Or would it simply be like finding him on the steps of the opera, soaked to the bone and her heart so strangely heavy? He was nothing to her. It still felt like peering out through a sheet of rain, squinting into the darkness, to picture him with a spear pointed in her direction. An image that didn’t quite fit.

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She would miss the moments when his smile reached his eyes. 

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“You’re always so nice to me,” Bernadetta sniffed miserably. She shuffled back a little, enough that her tears stopped pressing moist against Dorothea’s collarbone, but not far enough to leave the shade of her protection. _“Always._ Even though my mother… You don’t have to be nice to her. I know what she’s like.”

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Well if that didn’t break the glum mood just wonderfully! Dorothea waved it off with a stage laugh. “Don’t you worry about me. The Honorable Lady Varley is no different from any other patroness. Do you think I’d be where I am if I didn’t know how to schmooze a little?”

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Bernadetta’s face pinched into a frown, but before she could protest, Dorothea tensed and pointed out into the street.

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“That one.”

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A carriage rolled past them on the cobblestone, all fine black lacquer and exquisite intensity of the nouveau riche. Leading it were two copper horses draped in dark navy and crimson velvet, a fine weave that shone in the light as fiercely as the horses’ satin coats, and every detail of their tack and harnesses was limned in newly polished brass.

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“They’re certainly lovely,” Bernadetta said, perfectly uncertain.

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“Colors remind you of any other show ponies we know?”

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“Oh. _Oh!”_

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Dorothea hopped down from the fountain and offered her hand. “Come on, back to the fashion district we go. Silly us thinking we could get away with finding only _one_ color when our Ferdie needs half the rainbow to shine.”

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“Ferdinand?”

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Petra knocked on the door more forcefully. The handle rattled under her valiant attempts. “Ferdinand, I am smelling smoke! Is room on flame?”

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As another piece of paper caught the fireplace’s rampant heat and fell to ashes against his singed fingertips, Ferdinand wondered if that would be enough. If he burned down the room with him inside, would that even the score? An end to the matter of Aegir, to a legacy of rot and horror. 

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_“Ferdinand!”_

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He rubbed his hands over his face, clearing the tracks of tears on his cheeks even as the soot stained his skin. His feet carried him to the door, and he opened it only a crack, shoulder braced to prevent further entry. “Merely doing some cleaning.”

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“Okay. Then I will be cleaning with you.” Petra clutched a fist to her chest in declaration, just visible through the small opening, and it sent Ferdinand’s heart crawling into his throat. 

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“Please,” he croaked. “Leave me be.”

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The door clicked shut. He did not breathe until he heard her footsteps trail away at last. 

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Another page of frantic writing found its end in the blaze. And another. The fire caught hold of a tincture-stained corner and burst into a shower of sparks along Ferdinand’s skin. It hurt him not half as much as the sting of smoke in his lungs, of the tears that slipped like acid from his eyes.

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Of the truths now settling into his very marrow. 

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He snatched up the next page, glanced at the question and crumpled it with a cry. B-5. Punishments under the new regime. Ferdinand had listed out the foremost noble houses of the empire and the fortunes brought down upon their heads. 

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_Stupid little boy._ His voice. His father’s voice. No difference between them, now. The answers had been there all along. They were not merely the foremost houses, they were also the collaborators of the Insurrection of the Seven. Or rather, they were the foremost houses _because_ of their…politics.

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The game he had always wanted to play.

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_“Faerghus?” Lady Varley laughed. She swirled her evening whiskey in its frosted glass. “As far as I know that was a marital spat. Well. Not strictly marital. One of Ionius’ women ran off. He always had trouble keeping the household together. Not to spit on the dead, but Vestra only encouraged the drama. It was harder to pull the strings in those days. Ionius ruled with his iron fist, and the moment he brought it down anywhere, the wives would scatter and the political balance would shatter. Happy house, happy Emperor, miserable everyone else. House of chaos, miserable Emperor, and we did as we pleased. Understand?”_

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_Ferdinand understood only that he needed to focus on keeping his jaw clenched or else his mouth would drop open in horror. The woman had just admitted to collusion of the grandest scale: fostering disunity in the imperial household for personal gain?!_

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_“It worked like clockwork. Bribe one of the women to return to her family for a season and take her own brat with her, and Ionius would pass any decree you liked to get her home again. He liked having them all under one roof. I can’t imagine, personally. Sharing a home with Bernadetta was already noise aplenty. If there were eleven of her—” _

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_She shuddered._

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_“Arundel was always using his sister to get something out of Ionius. The title, the loans, the library… Snatching Edelgard away was the talk of the town. They’d just seized power—I have to say they, young master Ferdinand, because we women never got to have any of the fun. I recall your mother storming in from the opera and screaming like a banshee when she found out what the Insurrection had risked. Upon hearing the men had pulled it off without a hitch, her mood brightened remarkably. Now where was I? Ah, the Insurrection. Yes. We didn’t call it by that name yet, you understand. Everyone knew there had been military intervention in the palace. But to see Arundel waltz away with the Crown Princess, bearer of the Seiros Crest and Heir to Adrestia, was a trumpet’s blast heralding in the new order. Ionius had lost. Now he was the one bargaining for his near-dozen overfed brats, while you lot got to grow up with your futures assured.”_

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_“Does the taste not suit? Ferdinand.”_

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_Startled, he nearly dropped his own untouched glass of liquor. “Ah. My apologies. I am not accustomed to…”_

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_The Countess tipped back her head and laughed. “You never siphoned off a bit from the old man’s wine cellar? Precious child. You’ll develop a fondness for it soon enough. There’s no other way to get through a war.”_

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_At his mother’s parties, there had always come a moment where Ferdinand was told to stop bothering with the teapot and hurry up with the pastries instead. The wine flowed freely. He darted through a sea of shimmering skirts that floated like beautiful jellyfish, unstable and to be avoided at great cost. _

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_Wherever she was, his mother must surely be enjoying such a ‘tea’ party now._

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_“To answer your original question, I don’t think Edelgard had any problems in Faerghus. I certainly didn’t hear about any. When Arundel recalled her, back she came.” She lifted her glass for another sip, then rested it thoughtfully against her chin instead. “If they wanted to cause trouble with Faerghus, that would’ve been the proper time. No one would’ve batted an eye at a plague from the northern barbarians. Not like it mattered either way.”_

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_“I do not follow.”_

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_With a laugh, she stretched out a hand as if gesturing to a museum piece on display. “Do you remember the summer of 1173?”_

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_Ferdinand bristled. Any other year and the answer would have taken some thought, but that one lived in his heart in infamy. His mother had torn him away from Enbarr in the middle of the opera season, and he had never seen Manuela’s starring role in the The Devil of Derdriu because of it. By the time they returned to the capital two years later, his princess had stepped down from the stage forever._

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_“Yes.”_

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_“You were young. Do you remember the Why?”_

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_Why his mother had enacted such a cruelty upon his study of the performance arts? He frowned and shook his head. He had been angry, but his parents’ reasoning was always beyond comprehension. Ferdinand had simply learned not to ask._

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_Lady Varley stared down into her glass, eyes gone distant. “They called it the Children’s Plague. All the noble whelps were evacuated to their isolated villas and summer estates, and all the women went to care for them. Who’d be mad enough to stay?”_

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_“I stayed. There was work to be done. A cure to find. But they never let the Academy have a single one of the bodies for research. And for the mass hysteria of a plague, you’d think more than fifteen children would have perished. Anyone can look at ten dead imperial heirs and five dead street urchins and draw their own conclusions. As I said, it would’ve stood up far more easily if they blamed it on the northerners. But who was going to start asking questions and risk their own child next?”_

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_“Whatever the gamble, I guess it paid off. It was easier to control a puppet with only one daughter left. Your father played his cards excellently—if he hadn’t taken his eyes off the Princess, I have no doubt you would’ve been on that throne within the next decade. A shame. A face like yours would’ve been wonderful for public morale.”_

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Ten dead imperial heirs.

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Ferdinand had not known each of Edelgard’s siblings by name. Some were a decade his elder, and others still crawling the nursery floors in search of favorite toys. But Albrecht and Rudiger had been his _friends,_ or as close as one could get amid the pristine isolation of noble childhood with no siblings of one’s own. The two princes were inseparably close, year-mates of different mothers, and knew all the mysteries of heraldry and knighthood that Ferdinand so longed to reach for. He spent years chasing after them and boasting for attention, ever more determined to earn their praise with every bloodied lip and knee. 

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He was not so callous as to disregard their absence when he returned to Enbarr at thirteen—no, after two years of secluded training in the arts of the lance and sword, he was eager to test his mettle against such worthy peers! So he had asked his father where the princes had gone, and the Duke had grunted, _Academy,_ and his mother had chirped, _those boys are far too grown for such distractions as you, darling. _

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And that was that. Ferdinand did not ask again. He gripped his hand around his wooden sword and stalked off to the gardens to challenge Edelgard to a duel instead. She was to be Emperor; _she_ would see he could not so easily be left behind!

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If Ferdinand could not draw the line between his own voice and his father’s, then what did Edelgard hear? The mouthy shadow of her departed brothers, or the eager miniature of the man who had stolen far more than her father’s throne? 

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_I will find a way of showing everyone that I am superior to you!_

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Superior in callousness, in naivete, in his inability to arrange the pieces so readily on display into any coherent whole. That was the very basis of politics, or at least the uncorrupted core of good faith compromise that Ferdinand had spent so long imagining. He had not even managed to succeed at such a fantasy. 

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He had not managed to see the _politics_ sprouting up from ten shallow graves. He only sat there, alive and cared for, weeping for answers he had not wanted and now could not escape.

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Only the acrid burn of his carefully organized papers could clear cut through the fog in his head. The questions he had written were meaningless to him now. Edelgard would make her way, or she would not. Ferdinand’s comprehension was not required for the world to continue its effortless turning. His body was only one more match struck for or against the Emperor’s pyre.

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All along he had torn up the pages that smacked of egotism, when those were the only questions with tangible answers. **_Why do they hate me?_**

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Now Ferdinand asked how the coronation had been anything less than a slaughter. Lorenz had scoffed at the idea of house arrest being punishment enough, and still Ferdinand had not seen the contradiction true. It did not matter if Edelgard’s siblings passed from neglect or malice. Ludwig von Aegir owed the Empire his life. 

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Instead, he breathed. 

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Instead, his disinherited son choked on grief’s bitter bile. 

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It still meant nothing. A living body was one that could be interrogated, manipulated, profited off of. Ferdinand could ascribe no charity, no spirit of compromise to the decision—and yet of all the options, Edelgard had not selected the one with clear finality. Justice and a trial remained distantly possible.

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If she died, Ferdinand’s claim was apparent. She had still chosen not to eliminate the rival. Generation by generation, the Emperor and his nobles gnawed at the tethers of Adrestia, vying for wealth and power in a game of tug-of-war where the nation was not the prize, but the rope. Each cast the other down in turn, and red ran the rivers. Edelgard’s father wrested power from the noble houses. Ferdinand’s father stole it back in a coup. 

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Edelgard made herself a monster, bared her teeth at the world, and waited to see what Ferdinand would do. If he would cry foul and raise a banner of revolt, if he would cower and concede the game ended at last, if he would pick up sword or shield. 

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Ferdinand had neither to his name, only this heat that scalded him from inside out, his weeping turned to steam in his veins. The last of the pages crackled to black sparks, embers leaping in the air like a meteor shower as he stared through the murky smoke. When at last he had to turn away, coughing miserably against his sooty sleeve, his eyes caught upon a solemn golden gleam. 

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The insignia of House Aegir. 

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Ferdinand’s hand seized upon it before he ever thought to cross the room, and with the same dread certainty with which he had driven the point of his sword through the necks of so many men, he cast it into the flames.

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His knees gave out between one breath and the next. He wept with the clarity of childhood for a world irreparably broken like a dropped porcelain plate.

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It could have been hours or days by the time the door slammed open, lock jimmied by frustrated fingers, and Petra swept inside. She slid a tray of freshly brewed tea onto the table, threw open every window to let the breath-curdling smoke escape, and dashed water onto the raging fireplace. 

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“My father—” Ferdinand choked on the words as she tucked his head against her shoulder.

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“No.” Petra’s hands tightened around his back. “We are not our fathers.”

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As if it were that simple. 

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To weep and not feel shame. To be a different man.

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None of the girls showed up for breakfast the next two days, and lunches were similarly lonely. No matter. Ferdinand was no one’s keeper. He gathered the pile of used dishes left outside Bernadetta’s room after each meal and ensured they were cleaned swiftly enough for reuse. Only once all household chores had been dealt with did he tie a length of cloth around his forehead, roll up his shirtsleeves, and venture out for a run.

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It had nothing on a proper ride, of course. Even if he closed his eyes, the velocity of the wind could not compare to the swiftness of the world whipping by while he galloped with a trusted steed through the fields. He could not drop to a slow trot and let his companion wander along as he lost himself in thought, either. Without complete awareness of his surroundings, he’d tumble into the bakery stall again, and twice was already beyond the point of repentance. 

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The first time Ferdinand took to the streets like this, working himself to a lather of sweat in such an aristocratic neighborhood, everyone looked at him like he had sprouted a donkey’s head. Now they nodded as he passed, and a few of the women would even titter and wave back his way. 

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Certainly no one had ever waved to his father. 

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No, of course they had. Under duress, the same way the citizens of Aegir had always waved at their little lordling. The people here knew none of that and waved to him anyway. 

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Ferdinand had nearly made his decision. Following Edelgard and the Professor out of the Holy Tomb had been instinct alone, flight and fight in uneasy union, and momentum dragged him through the subsequent attack on Garreg Mach. He would never allow since insubstantial whims to drive him again. Right or wrong, Ferdinand would commit to a course and see it through to the bloody, disillusioned end. On that front he had no doubts. Such was life.

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Those few hesitant waves from one stranger to another had rattled loose one of the questions that plagued him: Nobility. After hundreds of years of misuse, Fodlan’s traditional hierarchies had been drained of all virtue, infested so thoroughly that the only thing upholding them were calcified greed and tautological legitimacy. That they must be cauterized and removed from the social body was clear to him now, yet it did not go far enough. The idealistic calls for merit within Edelgard’s manifesto rang equally hollow — was not merit what earned each noble house its title in the first place? Ferdinand saw no different between the two. Each should be earned, neither could stand eternal, and so each remained crucial, did it not? A society required excellence to thrive.

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That he had been born to a noble house opened the door to glory, to a rich heritage of inspiration that could not be stifled by a basket of bad eggs. Rosamund, Derick, Allaryce—his ancestors had all accrued power to the name of Aegir, not drifted along on their laurels, and it was their service, devotion, and wit that earned his family their place in Adrestian society, that opened the doors his father now brutally closed upon others. 

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Nobility was the opening of doors. Could it not be the opening of doors for others? Dorothea would not have attended the Officer’s Academy without one such noble opening that door for her, however high the price he asked. _True_ nobility would open the door for all. _True_ merit would plant the crown of laurels to bloom for generations.

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Ferdinand had not understood that months earlier when dear Lorenz asked of his plans. He had only woven his dreams like ivy upon a broken trellis, then wept upon seeing their collapse rather than their freedom. Serve in the army, perfect his leadership, study the true needs of the common man. Make his own name and dismantle his father’s work. It did not matter which army he chose; the dream was upon him. He had only to sign his name.

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The Alliance, to say nothing of the Kingdom, would grant him a senior position. Ferdinand was a protector of men by virtue of the duties imposed by his birth. 

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Currently, he was a protector of soapy dishes from careless hands and stained shirts from the discard bin. Menial drudgery that had shown him just how little he knew of common men, just how many pieces of wisdom were carefully culled from noble education, lest you look too kindly on those lower than you, lest they realize your tail is just the trailing leash left by your father. If he knew so little, how could he speak for them? 

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To fight for the dream of nobility, of what it _could_ be, or to learn to be a leader of men in truth, if he be worthy and thereby possess a noble heart? Not _which carrot for Ferdinand today,_ but which kind of rider — the one that accepted the ancestral bridle, or the one down in the mud growing his own damn carrots? 

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He wanted to be a man that people waved at, not a name they deferred to.

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_Winning Dorothea over would be an excellent start._ As he circled back around to the front steps of the townhouse, he grinned up at where she had perched on the front railing, effortlessly balanced with a wide-brimmed hat shielding her from the afternoon sun. 

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“Quite the refreshing breeze today!” he offered, stopping a respectable distance away as he wiped the sweat from his brow.

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Dorothea gave him a strange look that left him keenly aware of where his shirt laces hung loose over his half-exposed collarbones. “Mmhmm. Ferdie, can you do me a little favor?”

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“Of course. You have only to ask.”

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“Can you go wash up and then join us in the parlor?”

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“Posthaste!” 

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“And wear only your socks and your smalls?”

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He froze mid-assent.

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With a wink, she disappeared back inside. “We’ll be waiting!”

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What ungodly exhibition of public nudity had he agreed to? No, no. Bernadetta was home. Surely it would be nothing so…untoward. A figure drawing seminar in need of a live model, perhaps. Or Dorothea needed him for staging purposes as she worked on the outline of her opera. Or a possum had gotten into the crawlspaces and someone needed to go in after it. He only had the three shirts after all, he could not get them dirty during manual labor. 

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A public service, to be sure. 

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Posthaste. Yes.

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Ferdinand scampered inside to the washbasin to freshen up. A bit of rosewater to combat the, ah, rivaling freshness of his run, and then he stripped down and stepped into the hallway. He got two steps before realizing he was not at all sure if the Countess was home, tripped over himself rushing back to his room for a dressing gown, and headed out once more. If he had approached his stealth practicum with half the care he took now, peeking around every corner and darting past doors on tiptoe, he may have actually passed the certification exam. 

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In front of the parlor stood Petra, arms crossed and eyes bright. She was already smiling by the time Ferdinand spotted her, and it did not waver a bit as he nervously sidled over to join her.

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“You are not needing that.” She pointed to his robe.

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“This? I was merely chilly.”

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_Now_ her lips twitched in humor, damn her. “Do not worry, Ferdinand. Dorothea says to tell you she has been seeing it all before.”

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“Regardless of experience, this is incredibly inappropriate. If you do not reveal your motives immediately I will—”

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Petra held up a fist and let a length of dark fabric dangle freely. A blindfold.

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“Trust exercise,” she explained with far too magnanimous cheer. Those were the magic words, and she knew it.

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Ferdinand’s shoulders slumped, and the robe began to slip with them. He tipped down his head in mortified offering. “Oh, very well…” 

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She reached out to tie the blindfold over his eyes. “It is not so scandalous, Ferdinand. I promise. Bernadetta has made gift—”

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His head popped up so sharply it nearly cracked against Petra’s skull. _“She—?!”_

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Good Goddess. Socks and smalls, the only things a tailor expected you to acquire elsewhere. She had sewn for him. Ferdinand pressed a hand over his mouth and tried not to cry, grateful the blindfold would soak up the tears either way. 

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“Yes. But gift is needing adjustments and Bernadetta says she cannot accomplish her work with your eyes. Can you stand like statue?”

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“I shall be so still you will mistake me for marble,” he swore, hand over his heart. 

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Petra led him into the room and up onto a small footstool, wide enough for him to rest comfortably upon without losing his balance. Fortunate, as he jolted the moment Dorothea’s voice rang through the room.

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“He’s ready, Bern!”

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“Okay. Okay I’ve got the—” A scurry, a shuffle, and a shriek. _“Why is he naked!!”_

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“Because you have his clothes?” Petra answered at the same time Dorothea drawled, “I’m helping.”

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Clearing his throat, Ferdinand made sure to use only his most soothing, gracious tone. “Bernadetta, truly, I am grateful for whatever you have—”

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Someone swatted him on the thigh with a swatch of fabric. “Marble doesn’t talk.”

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“Bern, do you want me to Silence him? I don’t know the spell but I’m happy to give it a shot.”

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“How about no one talks! How about only Bernie talks!!!”

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Ferdinand said nothing to that and moved not an inch, but whatever expressions the other girls made, it sent Bernadetta choking on giggles. This was all distinctly uncomfortable. If Lady Varley returned home, he really would be thrown out on the streets like a proper tomcat. And yet the longer he listened to the quiet sounds of Bernadetta fussing over the fabric, the less he cared. 

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At first it was the parallel of standing helpless under so many eyes — was this not how Bernadetta felt whenever she left her room at the academy? If she had endured it for education’s sake, then he could do the same, challenging himself to a similar bravery. 

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But then, once someone folded his arms into a stiff linen shirt and the chill began to fade, he found it was truly no struggle at all to be here with these particular people. To quietly exist between one quest and the next.

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Bernadetta’s hands flitted over him like chickadees, neat and quick, her needle a clever beak tugging scraps into a nest around him. She fixed the length of his shirt cuffs, then the hem of his pant legs, then his collar, and soon enough he’d lost track of her entirely, drifting in the knowledge of being so wonderfully cared for. It could be a melon-green monstrosity and he would wear it for all his days. 

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“Oh, no no no…why don’t these lines match up?” Bernadetta muttered to herself. Her hands smoothed down the front of Ferdinand’s chest, feeling carefully, and then she whipped them back in a flash. “U-um, Ferdinand? Weird question.”

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The other girls tittered across the room, and Bernadetta huffed unhappily before leaning in to whisper at Ferdinand’s ear. “Are you bigger on one side? Like!! Your muscles. From your sword and lance work?”

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He barked a laugh and all the whispering stopped.

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It must have been the same for Bernadetta with her bow, so no wonder she knew to take it into account. Still, Ferdinand could not help but hear the echoes of an old weapons tutor who chided him for his martial asymmetry. Perhaps he would take up the axe with his non-dominant hand and finally even the score.

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“I am certain whatever you have made is perfect,” Ferdinand whispered right back. “I shall endeavor to perfect myself to fit.”

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She failed to answer him, and he could imagine her little frown. Her hands brushed over his chest once more, tentatively smoothing the lapels, and then she sighed. “Don’t…hate it. Or me.” A moment later he felt a silk cravat slide around the base of his neck, tucked and tied in short order. A few more adjustments here and there, then Bernadetta finally stepped away. 

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Dorothea whistled. Though her feet were couched in the softest slippers, Ferdinand still felt every step of her approach like the click of a stiletto into his sweaty palms. She reached up for the blindfold only to brush her fingers through his untrimmed locks with a hum, then freed his eyes and used the rich fabric to tie back his hair at the nape of his neck.

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“I have a mirror,” Bernadetta said quietly, sounding more than ever like she wanted to run. “So…you can open your eyes now.”

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He did.

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And stepped directly into the opera house, staring through the mirror at the very image of a dashing prince ready to leap on stage and rescue Princess Manuela from the evening’s devious marauders. Every color seemed cut from the finest tapestry, his vest a red so dark and rich it could have been sourced from the Mittelfrank’s velvet curtains, his pants the precise blue of the winter sea at midnight, flowing up and into the embroidery crawling over his vest and the broad golden-lined lapels spreading like wings across his chest. His sleeves were white at a glance, yet upon close inspection they boasted a delicate patterning of cream ivy worked upon the fine weave, and the cuffs shone with gold trimmings.

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They could have cast him as anyone, as Guardsman #3 from the alley brawl in _Loog’s Last Laugh,_ and instead they chose. This. 

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There was no stopping the tears that streamed from his eyes. Ferdinand did not even try, lest he stain a single stitch of the grand gesture now adorning his unworthy bones. 

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For him. Bernadetta—all of them, quite possibly—had done this for _him._ He could not remember ever receiving a present that meant this much, that meant anything at all. He could barely breathe beneath the weight of it, forcing his mouth into a wobbly smile that trembled around his shaking breaths.

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_Thank you,_ he mouthed to Bernadetta, for the words would not slide into their proper shape with his throat so thick with emotion.

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Petra walked a wide circle around him, inspecting carefully before rewarding him with one of her boundless smiles. “Perfect. Now you can be going to the Palace! Your men will show excitement to see you handsome.”

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“You know Bern, I always knew you could do it, but. Damn.”

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“Hush!! Um, Ferdinand? Is there anything you w-want changed? Bernie can still fix things, of course, if anything’s too tight or poking you or…”

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With a deep breath, Ferdinand stepped down from the stool and towards Bernadetta, falling to one knee the moment he was close enough to sweep up her hand. “Such garb is worthy of a far greater wearer than I, dearest Bernadetta. May I at least bear witness to your craft for all that see me.”

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_“Ferdinand,”_ she wheezed, snatching her hand away. “It’s not _that_ nice, it’s just…clothes. I’m very, very happy if you like them. O-oh! And when they need repairs, you just need to ask me, okay?”

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“Absolutely not.”

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“But—”

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He stretched out a hand to her once more, beseechingly, even though he did not make to touch her this time. “Should they suffer my lack of care, I shall certainly defer to your expertise. But please, Bernadetta. I would much prefer your kind tutelage on how to repair such damage myself, rather than have to burden you with my own inadequacies for every loose thread.”

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Bernadetta’s wide violet eyes blinked at him curiously. “You want to know how to sew?”

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“It would give me the greatest satisfaction to be able to darn my own socks at the same level of care with which I polish my own armor.”

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“I mean. I guess. But armor’s more important…”

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“Is a man’s suit not his finest armor?”

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“Alright, opera boy. That’s enough of that.” Dorothea plucked him up by the back of his collar, and Ferdinand went easily to his feet to prevent any strain on the fabric.

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“I dare say it is not! I have not even thanked _you_ yet, Dorothea. Do not think I failed to recognize the exact cut of this suit from the critically acclaimed _Tristan and Iseult_ production of ‘78.”

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She waved a hand. “We had the pattern lying around. It’s nothing.”

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Ferdinand opened his mouth to argue the point, then closed it once more. His hand settled over the brooch pinning down his cravat — a brass trinket clearly from the opera costume closet, a simple token that had seen so many heroes meet their destiny. “Still. I appreciate this more than I can say, my friends.”

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“Then, um. Ferdinand!!” Bernadetta crowded in against him, her hands clutching at his lapels as though his clothes had not yet fully made the transition from the safety of a project to being part of his person. “Are you—the war—will you stay?”

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By the sudden hush of the room, it was clear Bernadetta had not meant to ask such a thing so directly. Yet no one intervened. Petra and Dorothea, too, watched him with a solemn anticipation of rejection, though he knew them both to be pragmatic enough to accept the cards where they fell. 

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His answer did not depend on any of them. That long-sought decision depended instead on one final question, the one he hurtled through every time he went jogging and raced down the streets as fast as his legs could carry him: How far down the road to hell would Ferdinand run just to spite his father’s dreams?

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He could not trust Edelgard; he could not trust his father’s rejection of her. There was no praising her leadership amid such confusion, and no faith to be had in her ability to retain control, if she maintained any of it at all after such contradictory actions and allies. 

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But Ferdinand could trust in the simple reality that Edelgard needed advisers now more than ever – even if that was never the job he would hold, even if Ferdinand was merely a glorified foot soldier and barely considered a friend, Edelgard needed someone who wasn’t _Hubert._ Ferdinand could not let his father rob Edelgard of such critical, continent-defining counsel. She had lost enough. 

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Truth be told, they _all_ needed advisers, in the guise of friends and family who actually gave a damn. Ferdinand could imagine a world where he turned his back on this even as it broke his heart.

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But it did not have to be this one.

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“Yes,” he promised to the soft lavender crown of Bernadetta’s head, tucking himself around her in a gentle, easily escaped hug. “I’ll stay.”

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Ferdinand had forgotten that gold would not melt. 

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That was not strictly true, of course. There would not be such creative use of the medium if not for its many malleable qualities, and a forge possessed of enough strength would have little trouble shaping molten gold into whatever it pleased. A fireplace half-smothered by paper was not such a forge. 

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Still he startled in the doorway when his eyes caught a glimmer among the ashes of so many queries. The insignia of Aegir lay there untouched by the fire, smeared with soot but easily polished at the first brush of a cloth, and it warmed in Ferdinand’s hands as though he were the only forge that mattered. 

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He had been on his way to the Palace, outfitted in his new general’s garb and buoyed above his lingering fears by the new challenges unfolding before him. Now he stood with stained gloves holding a forgotten artifact, staring down at an unbeaten sun shining down upon a raging sea. 

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Ferdinand smiled. He slipped off his dirtied gloves, left them on the table, and pocketed the emblem of his house as he marched downstairs to meet his carriage.

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Subservience was not the opposite of Sedition. He could serve an Emperor truly without compromising his voice, without letting disagreement foster hostility, without leaving Edelgard alone to quell the shifting seas. Ferdinand had decided this, and so it would be true. He would make it true. Alongside this unshakable outlook, Ferdinand had established his plan of unimpeachable action: Serve the people. Revitalize the dying heart of true nobility. Question the work he was given, pick it apart down to the bones to ensure each joint functioned in full service to the people of Adrestia, of Fodlan. Build until they not only had a world of thriving, but a thriving that could not be waylaid by wickedness. 

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Convince the Emperor that a fair, impartial trial was the only acceptable fate for Ludwig von Aegir; that justice would not fail her even if the scales were released from her vengeful fist.

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Hold tight to his friends, this family that finally _saw_ him, and bear their burdens in recognition of all they had borne for him. Weather every foul word Hubert spit his way. Show even that foul villain what true honor meant.

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And finally…

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Ferdinand curled his bare hands into fists, tucked away at the small of his back as he waited in the hall. He had not been allowed to walk freely through the imperial palace, signifying his lack of status and an uncertain measure of distrust, but no one had diverted him to the Household Minister’s dread clutches this time. The footman directed him to Her Majesty’s personal office and slipped inside to announce his presence.

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He brushed over the shape of the insignia in his pocket. Day by day, the weight upon his heart had begun to wane, and the weight upon his shoulders had grown.

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_I inherited this. I will earn it instead. I will show you what a true Aegir is capable of._

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_I will make you see me. I will challenge you in the light._

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_I will ensure you have no doubt._

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“Sir.” The footman emerged and nodded his head, a politeness Ferdinand was no longer owed. “Her Majesty will see you now.”

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Ferdinand took a deep breath, held it, and marched inside. 

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Clearly this was Edelgard’s working office, not one where she would ever receive dignitaries or entertain private meetings. Bookshelves lined the otherwise barren walls, and though the desk and cabinets were of impeccable make, their function clearly outweighed their decorative capacity. Treaties and legal collections composed the bulk of the collection. Ferdinand’s eyes skipped over the marked titles, fingers itching for a closer perusal.

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Edelgard sat behind her desk with her head bowed over her work. Her pen’s effortless scrawl did not slow as he approached, and for all Ferdinand had dreaded her sharp eyes shredding his oaths to the worthless scrap they were, he did not know what to make of this quiet disregard. 

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It labeled him as nonthreatening. Did that place him beneath her notice or among the ranks of her friends?

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The last time Edelgard tried to speak to him, in the derelict remains of the monastery’s cathedral, Ferdinand had spooked and fled at the confidence of her steps, her voice, her poise amid the chaos. Now when it mattered most, he wanted to meet her on even footing. Yet his boots made little noise against the carpet, his words drifted into mist within his chest, and as he approached the desk, his hand slipped into his pocket as if drawn there by magnetism.

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Edelgard’s pale eyes caught the rich glint of gold and flicked up to meet Ferdinand’s gaze.

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“Edelgard. Your Highness.” He could not settle on a name in his head. Friend, liege, executioner. “Edelgard,” he echoed softly. 

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He cleared his throat.

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He laid his family insignia upon the desk and pulled his hand away.

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Edelgard’s hand hovered over the emblem, and his heart stuttered in his chest, because for a moment there seemed a flash of devastation in her, a lightning strike there and gone, lost beyond the iron gates of the Emperor’s impassive visage. She held it up to the light as though inspecting its veracity. “Very well. I accept your resignation.”

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“No!” Ferdinand lurched forward, unthinkingly clasping his hands over hers on top of his family insignia. “That was not my intent!”

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The Emperor said nothing. He felt her gaze heavy upon him, waiting, but he did not raise his eyes to meet hers. He only stared down at where their hands were touching. She had not pulled away.

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“I thought that you would adequately comprehend the significance of my gesture.” Oh Goddess there were tears prickling in his eyes. Not now. He would not let this appear a performative oath, operatic and disingenuous. He needed her to _understand._ “I have not prepared anything sufficiently…”

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“Grandiose?” Edelgard prompted, something like a smile twisted into the word, and some of the pressure around his chest eased.

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“This emblem has been passed down through my family for nearly a thousand years. You will note that it takes the shape of a shield. That is what we were meant to be: the Empire’s shield, the _Emperor’s_ shield. Whether aside you or in front. There was a purpose. A thousand years of purpose! And when I sold the bones of Aegir, the merchant would not even take this one last little shield from me. A matter of nobility, he said. Legal hand-wringing. No. I will dare to say what he would not: it is worthless.”

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Ferdinand squeezed his hands gently to rid them of their tremor. She was not wearing her usual gloves. Charcoal and ink marred her fingers. 

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“So I wish to return it to you, in recognition that I do not… Not that I wish to give you things of no value! I would not foist meaningless gifts upon you. But I wish to relay the fact that—while I cannot agree with your complete disregard for the fundamental underpinnings of nobility, there are certain…points. Upon which we may see eye to eye.” He still did not raise his own to hers. 

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“You know what such things mean to me. You have taken all of Aegir. I need you to take this piece as well.”

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“Ferdinand…”

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He squared his shoulders beneath all their weight. “I will not accept the laurels of my ancestors if I have not earned them myself. That is what merit means, is it not? And I will not accept a House Aegir any less than the one your—no, _our_ Empire deserves. That is what nobility means. I have no need of golden baubles. There is work to be done.”

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“Your Majesty, I regret that I am not much a shield, but I swear to you my lance. My trust and my loyalty. So…please do not let me down. I pray I never let you down in turn, and I will give far more than prayer to make it so.”

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When Ferdinand finally risked a glance to her face, he was shocked to find no regal assent, no hint of a smile. A small furrow troubled Edelgard’s brow, even as she finally pulled away from him and slipped the emblem of Aegir into her desk. There it could rest in another graveyard of papers, though a little less burnt this time. 

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“Are such things not earned?” Edelgard asked slowly. It was not suspicion that painted her tone. Ferdinand could not identify it precisely, but he knew his answer would be judged carefully.

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All he could do was grin and nod. “Yes, indeed! And I shall endeavor to earn yours in turn. And once I have it—” Perhaps that sounded a bit ominous, but he was beginning to feel the role they’d cast him in. A place he could thrive, could shine and catch her eye, could prove to her his immutable worth with every valiant deed.

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And truly, would not a dashing hero end such dealings with a promise and a smile? 

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_“Then,_ you will finally grant me a duel!”

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illustrations:  
Ferdie & Bernie, The Fitting - [Birds](https://twitter.com/hausofthestars/)  
Ferdie & Edie, The Promise - [Kyuhu](https://twitter.com/kyuhuuu)
> 
> Fun fact: This entire story I have had to prevent myself from ever calling the noble insignia either a Crest or THE AEGIR EMBLEM, for obvious reasons.  
My struggle is over.  
I am at peace.


End file.
